PRIMITIVE LAND TENURES 103 



one on a large scale with which we are acquainted, of 

 the earliest system of land-holding prevailing in this, 

 as in most Teutonic countries. To go back no further 

 than medieval times, the manor lands were divided 

 into three great fields, one for wheat, one for spring 

 corn, one fallow, and each field was then subdivided 

 into ploughlands the selions some of which were 

 held by the tenants and others made up the lord's 

 demesne. In these days the farming was in common 

 and remained so after much more complicated rota- 

 tions than the three-field course had been introduced ; 

 the selions may once have been yearly redistributed 

 by lot, so that all men should have an equal chance 

 of the good land, but each man retained the same 

 extent of holding, however much scattered about 

 among the furlongs. We did not learn, if indeed it 

 is now possible to recover the knowledge, when the 

 tenants acquired a title to their particular strips or 

 when the common farming gave place to separate 

 cultivation, but the land is now held individually by 

 comparatively small holders either as freeholds, which 

 were parts of the lord's demesne or lands afterwards 

 enfranchised, or as copyholds, which represent portions 

 of the original servile tenures. 



Of other manorial customs we found trace in the 

 low-lying country of turbaries, which have been more 

 or less taken up by squatters in small holdings, not, 

 however, divided into strips, and there are also certain 

 commons enclosed under an Act and similarly divided 

 up within living memory. The strip farming, however, 

 prevails over all the land which we may suppose to 

 have been dry in medieval times, in the southern part 

 of the Island at any rate, for in the parish of North 

 Belton we again saw the land enclosed. The soil is a 

 deep, black, sandy loam, easy to work and grateful for 



