CHAPTER IX 



The Lower Thames Basest 



The four counties which lie between East Anglia, Kent, and the 

 circuit of the midland system, together forming what may be 

 called the basin of the lower Thames east of the Chilterns, are 

 Surrey, Middlesex, Hertfordshire, and Essex. To the north this 

 basin is drained by the small rivers Colne, Lea, Roding, and by 

 the coastal streams of Essex; to the south by the Wey and the 

 Mole. For the most part it is sharply bounded by high hills. 

 The Surrey downs stretch from Croyden southwest to Aldershot, 

 while high-lying heath and the forest of Windsor extend north- 

 ward to the Thames. On the northwest and north the Chiltern 

 hills and foothills continue the boundary to the corner of Essex, 

 whence it is no longer upland but the river Stour flowing down 

 to the sea. Although the basin of the lower Thames is not strictly 

 conterminous with the four counties mentioned, it is nearly so. 

 The exclusion of a strip of Surrey on the south and of the edge 

 of Hertfordshire on the north is compensated for by the inclusion 

 of southern Buckinghamshire and a patch of Bedfordshire. The 

 region is practically that which must have been occupied by the 

 East Saxons and Middle Saxons in the sixth century. 



In its field systems this area differed somewhat from the Kent- 

 ish, East Anglian, and midland districts, but borrowed character- 

 istics from each. The unit of villein tenure was in general not 

 the iugum or the tenementum (although there are interesting 

 exceptions), but the virgate. This midland feature, however, was 

 such in name rather than in reality. The virgates here did not 

 consist, as they did in the midlands, of parcels equally distributed 

 between two or three fields; instead their parcels lay irregularly 

 throughout several furlongs, shots, fields, or crofts. In this ir- 

 regularity they approximated to fifteenth-century Kentish hold- 

 ings and East Anglian tenementa. Although the region was more 



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