402 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



fields. The character of a Jacobean survey of Feltham is the 

 principal reason for admitting the latter possibility; other evi- 

 dence tells for irregular fields, like the adjacent ones of Surrey. 

 What is clear is that the plain on both sides of the Thames west 

 of London constituted a region where the midland system and the 

 Kentish system came into contact. In Middlesex, the former 

 seems to have prevailed, in Surrey the latter. The outcome was 

 a hybrid system dif^cult to follow in its origins; and, indeed, this 

 difficulty pertains to the field arrangements which characterized 

 the entire lower valley of the Thames. Scarcely any part of 

 England is so dependent upon conjecture for the writing of its 

 early field history. For this reason it is to be hoped that new 

 documents may in time dissipate some of the uncertainties which 

 this chapter leaves unsettled. 



