352 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



It would be natural for the new lords to desire uniformity of size 

 in the units from which rents and services would henceforth be 

 due. What more natural, then, than that they should discard 

 the antiquated and perhaps forgotten iuga and assess their 

 tenants on the basis of actual holdings ? To equalize the areas 

 of these holdings so as to make them full units or half-units 

 it would only be necessary to shift a few parcels here and there. 

 Some holdings may have been found compact and may have 

 been left so. The outcome of such a readjustment would be 

 tenementa and eriungs like those met with in the thirteenth 

 century. Conjectural as this hypothesis is, it explains more 

 simply than any other the aspect and characteristics of the East 

 Anglian unit of villein tenure. If it be accepted, the tenemen- 

 tum becomes a derivative of the Kentish iugum, the result of 

 an arrest in its disintegration and the making permanent for a 

 time of the stage of decline then reached. 



There remains the question whether any unusual event in 

 East Anglian history may have contributed to the break-up of 

 an ancient iugum and perhaps have had something to do with 

 the formation of the manorial system which, in accordance with 

 the foregoing hypothesis, created the new units and the new 

 pasturage arrangements. For answer there must be further 

 resort to conjecture. Domesday Book, as has been noted, shows 

 us that the petty manors and numerous freeholds of East Anglia 

 were in existence earlier than 1086. That these features are in 

 no wise to be attributed to the Norman Conquest is apparent 

 from the assumption of the survey that the conditions which it 

 describes go back, in general at least, to the time of the Confessor. 

 Before this date the most pronounced social revolution which 

 Anglo-Saxon East Anglia experienced was the Danish invasion. 

 That the Danes came in sufficient numbers to make permanent 

 settlements is proved by the place-names of the region. To the 

 Danes also is probably to be attributed the larger free element in 

 the population which in 1086 still persisted here, as elsewhere in 

 the Danelaw. 



In a well-settled area, such as East Anglia undoubtedly was 

 before the coming of the Danes, the intrusion of a considerable 



