RESULTS AND CONJECTURES 4II 



in view of the fact that open-field arable of one sort or another 

 could be found throughout England in the thirteenth century, 

 the existence of it at an earlier time is almost a postulate. What 

 we should like to know are the varieties of open field with which 

 the Anglo-Saxons were familiar, and of these the charters tell 

 us nothing. It is necessary, then, to assume that distinctions 

 which obtained in the thirteenth century are assignable to the 

 period that saw the accomplishment of Saxon settlement, or at 

 least to the period that followed the Danish invasions. If this 

 assumption be not admitted, variations in field systems have 

 nothing to tell about the settlement of England. 



If it be granted, however, that field arrangements as we find 

 them in the thirteenth century represent more ancient usages, 

 the preceding chapters have implications. It has appeared that 

 a large midland area was characterized by a two- and three-field 

 system. That this system was not Celtic an examination of 

 Scottish, Irish, and Welsh evidence has made clear. In Celtic 

 countries we do not find the arable of a farm, township, or town- 

 land divided into two or three equal compact areas and tilled 

 under a rotation of two crops and a fallow. This was, on the 

 other hand, or it came to be, a custom prevalent in Germany, es- 

 pecially east and south of the Weser.^ Since this is the region 

 from which the invaders who settled midland England appear to 

 have come,2 it is probable that the two- and three-field arrange- 

 ments of the midlands represent Germanic usage.^ If this be 

 true, the thorough Germanization of central England suggested 

 by various practices is confirmed by the testimony of field sys- 

 tems. No Romano-Briton population remained there in numbers 

 large enough to preserve either a Celtic or a Roman method of 

 tilling the soil. 



The westernmost territory which thus yielded to the invasion 

 of Teutonic custom is interesting, since it did so rather grudg- 

 ingly. It comprised the counties of Herefordshire and Shrop- 

 shire, a fertile region early occupied by the Magonsaetan. Here, 



^ Meitzen, Siedelung und Agrarwesen, i. 33-36, 67, 169, and Atlas, Uebersichts- 

 karte; Hanssen, Agrarhistorische Abhandlungen, i. 171. 



2 Chadwick, Origin of the English Nation, pp. 88, 91, 116; map, p. 112. 

 ' Cf. Meitzen, as above, ii. no. 



