404 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



phases of progress. The first is the reduction of the waste to 

 reguhir and considerable, but still open-field, tillage; the second is 

 the enclosure of the now well-established arable fields and re- 

 maining commons, accompanied by some increase in improved 

 pasture and by the substitution for the old fixed succession of 

 crops and fallow of a varied rotation of grains and grasses. The 

 first phase comprehends the development of open-field systems, 

 the second the history of enclosure. With both these subjects 

 the preceding chapters have been concerned, but with the latter 

 somewhat incidentally. 



What, now, does our investigation show to have been the rela- 

 tion between the subdivision of England according to field sys- 

 tems and the lines of agricultural development just indicated ? 

 Precisely this, that enclosure was earliest achieved outside the 

 precincts of the midland system. The map which Slater has 

 roughly constructed from the list of eighteenth- and nineteenth- 

 century enclosure acts shows that the midland area was the one 

 where open fields lingered longest.^ Gay had already shown that 

 the small enclosures of the sixteenth century took place particu- 

 larly within this region, and had correctly inferred that the open 

 fields then encroached upon lay largely within those counties in 

 which such fields were especially to be found. ^ In most counties 

 lying without the midland area, unenclosed arable fields, so far as 

 existent, disappeared for the most part before the era of parlia- 

 mentary enclosure. Only Surrey, Middlesex, Hertfordshire, and 

 a part of Norfolk then retained any appreciable stretches of 

 them. In Northumberland, Durham, and Cumberland they had 

 vanished rapidly after the sixteenth century. Earlier still they 

 had ceased to be characteristic of Devon and Cornwall, Cheshire 

 and Lancashire, SufTolk, Kent and Essex. ^ 



One reason for this early disappearance of unenclosed arable 

 lies in the nature of the field systems prevalent in these counties. 

 Since both Celtic and Kentish systems were in part determined 



' English Peasantry, p. 73. 



^ " Inclosures in England," Quarterly Journal of Economics, xvii. 576, 593-594. 

 In a footnote contemporary authorities are cited. 

 ' Cf. above, chapters VI, VII, IX. 



