3/6 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



Still farther in the direction of London is Cheshunt, a parish of 

 the Lea valley adjacent to Waltham abbey. Relative to two 

 manors lying mainly in this parish but extending beyond it up 

 and down the river, we have surveys of 19 James I.^ In the 

 manor of Periers and Beaumond, reaching into Wormley and 

 Tunford on the north, the larger holdings were leaseholds, and 

 for the most part consisted of parcels of pasture and meadow 

 with a few acres in the common meadows. In the other manors 

 of Theobalds, Crosbrook, and Collins, lying towards Waltham, 

 there was still much open field. Here, too, the larger holdings 

 were held by lease, the copyholders having only messuages with 

 at best bits of land attached. The most important leaseholds 

 are summarized in Appendix VI in a schedule which accounts for 

 all the Cheshunt open field. No fewer than 250 arable acres of 

 the manor were common and unenclosed, while the irregularity of 

 field arrangements is perceptible at a glance. As at Edmonton, 

 which was just down the valley of the Lea in Middlesex, a tenant 

 usually had parcels in two or three fields ; ^ but the two or three 

 were seldom the same. No one of them had the prominence 

 which " le Hyde " had at Edmonton, though Holbrooke was 

 favored. Such surveys well illustrate the field situation which 

 was likely to be found just to the north of London at the end of 

 the sixteenth century. 



If we turn from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century evidence 

 to that of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, we shall find 

 the same line of demarcation in the county. One of the town- 

 ships north of the hills in the Bedfordshire plain is Hexton, 

 where an early charter of Walter de la Ponde bestowed 23 acres 

 of land upon St. Albans abbey. After describing eight parcels 

 which contained 12 acres, the charter gathers under the rubric 

 " Et in alio campo " the remaining twelve or thirteen parcels.^ 

 At the time, therefore, Hexton was in two fields, as were several 

 townships in this part of Bedfordshire.^ Another Hertfordshire 



1 Land Rev., M. B. 216, ff. 16-38. 

 ''■ Cf. below, p. 381, and Appendix VI. 



* Cott. MS., Otho D III, f. 1526. At the end of the charter the manuscript is 

 injured. 



^ Cf. below, Appendix II. 



