235] ^^^ DISINTEGRATION OF THE OPEN FIELDS 79 



between the different qualities of land, and cultivating only 

 the land in comparatively good condition. Tenants taking 

 up additional land cultivated only a part of their enlarged 

 holdings. The least productive strips were allowed to be- 

 come overgrown with grass. The better strips were kept 

 under crop. 



If we are to accept the testimony of Fitzherbert and 

 Tusser, strips of grass in the common fields, or lea land, as it 

 was called, were a feature of every open-field township, by 

 the sixteenth century. According to Fitzherbert, " in euery 

 towneshyppe that standeth in tillage in the playne countrye, 

 there be ... . leyse to tye or tedder theyr horses and 

 mares vpon." ^ According to Tusser, the process of laying 

 to grass unproductive land was still going on. 



Land arable driuen or wome to the proof e, 

 and craveth some rest for thy profits behoof, 



With otes ye may sowe it the sooner to grasse 

 more sooner to pasture to bring it to passe.* 



The later surveys give additional evidence of the extent 

 to which the new tenantry had restricted the area of cultiva- 

 tion in the old fields which had once been entirely arable 

 land. The most noteworthy feature of the survey of East 

 Brandon, Durham (1606), was, according to Gray, 



the appearance in certain fields of meadow along-side the 

 arable. Lowe field was almost transformed by such procedure, 

 for seldom did the tenants retain any arable there. Instead 

 they had large parcels of meadow, sometimes as many as 

 twenty acres; nor does anything indicate that these parcels 

 were enclosed. They seem, rather to have remained open and 

 to point to a gradual abandonment of arable tillage. Such an 



^Surveyinge, ch. 41. 



^Five Hundred Points (London, 1812). 



