22 HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE [vi. 



VI. 



MR. SEEBOHM. 



THE preceding chapters, as well as nearly all the 

 subsequent parts of this book, were written before 

 Mr. Seebohm's work on Village Communities and the 

 English Manor appeared, and I congratulate myself 

 on the fact, that the opinions I have expressed in 

 the foregoing chapters are verified by Mr. Seebohm's 

 accurate and laborious researches. He has, besides, 

 thrown much new light on the economy of the 

 English Manor in the centuries succeeding the 

 Conquest. 



He has traced with minute and extended inquiry 

 the mode in which the arable land of England was 

 then cultivated shown that the villeins ploughed 

 the land in parallel strips a furlong in length, with 

 a space or balk between adjacent strips that the 

 strips belonging to one villein, and forming with 

 their appurtenances his virgate or yard of land, were 

 scattered over the open fields, that they were held 

 not in common but separately, were indivisible, 



