414 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



for purposes of pasturage, the transition in question may have 

 occurred in those places in which it was desirable to utilize all 

 available pasture. Where, on the other hand, the moor and fell 

 of the township furnished ample grazing ground, it may never 

 have come about at all. Certain features of the Northumber- 

 land evidence, especially the marking-ofY of fields on sixteenth- 

 century maps, suggest that some townships of this county may 

 have adopted the three-field system; but the unequal division 

 of the parcels of the tenants' holdings among the fields leaves the 

 matter in doubt. Other Northumberland townships probably 

 never created three equal compact fields. Nothing whatever in 

 the evidence from Cumberland and northern Lancashire leads us 

 to think that the three-field system ever developed there. 



Cheshire, southern Lancashire, western Somerset, Devon, and 

 Cornwall were regions in which there was either a far slighter 

 extension of runrig in early days or a more rapid consolidation 

 of scattered parcels than in Northumberland, Cumberland, and 

 northern Lancashire, In explaining how runrig arose we have 

 had occasion to point out that a farm, township, or townland 

 might show no trace of it if the custom of joint succession had 

 not been effective, or if the landlord had intervened to prevent 

 subdivision, or if he had at any time exercised his authority by 

 reconsolidating the subdivided arable; it might appear in only a 

 modified form if the lands to be divided were meadow or pasture 

 rather than arable and the need of marking out strips for cooper- 

 ative ploughing did not arise. One or another of these factors 

 seems to have been at work in the counties now under considera- 

 tion. Traces of runrig have been found in each of them, but the 

 intermixed strips show evident tendencies toward early disap- 

 pearance. In Cornwall and Devon, furthermore, the lands so 

 divided were at times apparently improved waste or marsh. The 

 conclusion suggested is that the counties in question were sub- 

 jected to Celtic influence in the matter of field systems, but in a 

 different way from those to the north: the original farms, ap- 

 parently like many in pastoral Wales, sometimes escaped sub- 

 division, or at least escaped it to such a degree that reconsolida- 

 tion was easy and was achieved at an early date. 



