388 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



rental of St. Paul's manor of Heybridge in 1675, and a plan of 

 New College's manor of Homechurch Hall in 1662, show closes 

 only,* and so do various accounts of late sixteenth-century 

 conditions. A two-hundred-page survey of Westham, a short 

 one of the manor of Lawford Hall, an excellent one of East- 

 wood Bury, a plan of four " tenements " in Woodham Ferrers, 

 describe enclosures.^ From the times of Henry VIII and Ed- 

 ward IV we hear principally of crofts in a detailed rental of 

 Rivenhall, in the fragment of a survey of Sandon, in extracts from 

 the court rolls of Crepinghall, in a description of tenants' hold- 

 ings at Newhall in Boreham, and in a full account of the manor 

 of Wikes.' Finally, fourteenth- and fifteenth-century terriers of 

 the lands of various chantries at Colchester seem to be concerned 

 mainly if not altogether with enclosures. ■• 



Such evidence might raise the question, as it did in Kent, 

 whether common arable fields ever existed, and the topography 

 of the county might suggest that Essex was isolated from its 

 western neighbors by stretches of forest through which open-field 

 usages never found their way. It is true in a measure that the 

 western boundary of the county was reinforced by tracts of for- 

 est. Toward Hertfordshire lay Hatfield Chase, toward Middle- 

 sex the wider reach of Epping. These forests, however, seem 

 not to have acted as barriers to colonization or communication. 

 To judge from the frequency with which Domesday hamlets were 

 scattered throughout them, their settlement was not long de- 

 layed; ^ and the numerous possessions of Waltham abbey within 

 the bounds of Epping at an early period indicate that communica- 

 tion with the home manor to the west cannot have been difficult. 

 There is thus no topographical reason why western Essex should 



1 MSS. of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's, Press A, Box 62; Rawl. MS. 

 B311. 



* Exch. Aug. Of., M. B. 425, ff. 1-113, 3 Jas. I; Add. MS. 34649, i Jas.; Rawl. 

 MS. B 308, 8 Eliz.; Harl. MS. 6697, ff. 20-24, 21 Eliz. 



' Rents, and Survs., Portf. 2/44, 7/47; ibid., Ro. 196, 3 Edw. IV; Treas. of 

 Receipt, M. B. 163, f. 47. 



* Philip Morant, History and Antiquities of the County of Essex (2 vols., Chelms- 

 ford, 1816), i. 150-158. 



* See the Domesday map in Victoria History of Essex, i. 426-427; also W. R. 

 Fisher, The Forest of Essex, London, 1887. 



