THE LOWER THAMES BASIN 399 



integrity of the virgate, moreover, was not long maintained in 

 Essex, where the use of the term so late as the sixteenth century 

 was unusual. 



In Surrey virgates bore the midland name and continued in- 

 tact; but the county furnishes one deviation from the customary 

 nomenclature which is significant in determining the affiliation of 

 the field system of at least a part of the region. This divergent 

 nomenclature occurs in an extent of Ewell, undated, but at least 

 as early as the thirteenth century.^ In this extent the tenants' 

 holdings are never rated in virgates but always in iuga. The 

 first tenant held " unum iugerum [iugum] terre continens xiii 

 acras terre," twelve others had one iugum each, one had one and 

 one-half iuga, three had three iuga each, and fourteen had half- 

 iuga. Although no field detail relative to the iuga is given, we 

 are able to supply a certain amount from a field-book of 8 Henry 

 IV.2 In the latter document as we pass from furlong to furlong, 

 each composed largely of acre and half-acre parcels in the hands 

 of many tenants, we often meet with such items as " dimidia acra 

 quam tenet Thomas Wagmore de tenemento Wowards." ^ Now, 

 one of the tenants of a half-iugum in the extent was Rogerus 

 Woward; and by looking closely we shall find that many of the 

 parcels of the field-book were still attributed to tenementa which 

 bore the names of the tenants of the extent. In the interim be- 

 tween the drawing up of the two documents the iuga had come 

 to be called tenementa and the constituent parcels of each iugum 

 had fallen into the hands of divers new tenants. The latter 

 change is precisely that which thirteenth-century tenementa in 

 Norfolk underwent, and the Ewell field-book in its attribution of 

 parcels to tenementa is Hke a fifteenth-century Norfolk field- 

 book.* How much the parcels of the Ewell tenementa were 

 dispersed throughout the open arable area cannot be precisely 

 ascertained, for the field-book often neglects to attribute strips 

 to their respective tenementa. Considerable scattering there 



^ Register or Memorial of Ewell, Surrey (ed. Cecil Deedes, London, 1913), pp. 

 135-162. The texts printed are from a sixteenth-century transcript. 

 2 Ibid., pp. 1-135. 

 ^ Ibid., p. 35. 

 ^ Cf. above, p. 334. 



