241 ] THE DISINTEGRATION OF THE OPEN FIELDS 85 



of rest. These men were apparently unaffected by any in- 

 creasing demand for wool, but were managing their land 

 according to its needs. 



By the sixteenth century, then, some enclosures had ap- . 

 peared in the open fields, and the old common-field system r 

 was disintegrating. The old customary holdings had been 

 so altered that they were hardly recognizable. Some ten- 

 ants held a great number of acres, and had managed by 

 purchase or exchange to get possession of a number of ad- 

 jacent strips', which they might, under certain conditions, 

 be able to enclose. Much of the land, however, was with- 

 drawn from cultivation, and for years was allowed to re- 

 main almost in the condition of waste. 



For the most part, however, there had been no revolu- ' 

 tionary change in the system of husbandry. The framework 

 remained. The whole community still possessed claims ^ 

 extending over most of the land. The village flocks pas- 

 tured on the stubble and the fallows of the open fields. The 

 advantages which could in theory be derived from the con- 

 trol of several adjacent strips of land were reduced to ai 

 minimum by the necessity of maintaining old boundaries to 

 mark off from each other lands of differing status. Even 

 where the consolidation of holdings had proceeded to some 

 extent, the tenants who had acquired the most compact hold- 

 ings in comparison with the majority still possessed scat- 

 tered plots of land separated from each other by the hold- 

 ings of other men, and some of the smaller holders had no 

 two strips which touched each other. When the tenants 

 had been left to themselves, all of the changes which took 

 place before the eighteenth century, numerous as they were, 

 usually left the fields in a state resembling more their con- 

 dition in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries than that of 

 the nineteenth century. 



