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That this open field system, the remains of which have now been examined, was identical with that which existed in the Middle Ages might easily be proved by a continuous chain of examples. But it will be enough for the present purpose to pick out a few typical instances, using them as stepping-stones.

Tusser.

It would be easy to quote Tusser's description of 'Champion Farming' in the sixteenth century. In his 'Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry' he describes the respective merits of 'several,' and 'champion' or open field farming. But as he describes the latter as a system already out of date in his time, and as rapidly giving way to the more economical system of 'several' or enclosed fields, we may pass on at once to evidence another couple of centuries earlier in date. [p018]

Of the fact that the open field system 500 years ago (in the fourteenth century), with its divisions into furlongs and subdivision into acre or half-acre strips, existed in England, the 'Vision of Piers the Plowman' may be appealed to as a witness.

Piers the Plowman.

What was 'the faire felde ful of folke,' in which the poet saw 'alle maner of men' 'worchyng and wandryng,' some 'putten hem to the plow,' whilst others 'in settyng and in sowyng swonken ful harde'?11 A modern English field shut in by hedges would not suit the vision in the least. It was clearly enough the open field into which all the villagers turned out on the bright spring morning, and over which they would be scattered, some working and some looking on. In no other 'faire felde' would he see such folk of all sorts, the '[hus]bondemen,' bakers and brewers, butchers, woolwebsters and weavers of linen, tailors, tinkers, and tollers in market, masons, dikers, and delvers; while the cooks cried 'Hote pies hote!' and tavern-keepers set in competition their wines and roast meat at the alehouse.12

Then as to the division of the fields into furlongs; remembering that the wide balks between them and along the headlands were often covered with 'brakes and brambles,' the point is at once settled by the naïve confession of the priest who scarce knew perfectly his Paternoster, and could 'ne solfe ne synge' 'ne seyntes lyues rede,' yet knew well enough the 'rymes of Robyn hood,' and how to 'fynde an hare in a fourlonge.' 13 [p019]

Further, a chance indication that the furlongs were divided into half-acre strips occurs most naturally in that part of the story where the folk in the fair field, sick of priests and parsons and other false guides, come at last to Piers the plowman, and beg him to show them the way to truth; and he replies that he must first plow and sow his 'half-acre:'

I have an half acre to erye · bi the heighe way:

Hadde I eried this half acre · and sowen it after,

I wolde wende with you · and the way teche.14

And if there should remain a shadow of doubt whether Piers' half-acre must necessarily have been one of the strips between the balks into which the furlongs were divided, even this is cleared up by the perfect little picture which follows of the folk in the field helping him to plow it. For in its unconscious truthfulness of graphic detail, after saying—

Now is perkyn and his pilgrymes · to the plowe faren:

To erie his halue acre · holpyn hym manye,

the very first lines in the list of services rendered explain that—

Dikeres and delueres · digged up the balkes.15

Terrier of Cambridge open fields in the fourteenth century.

This incidental evidence of 'Piers the Plowman' is fully borne out by a manuscript terrier of one of the open fields near Cambridge, belonging to the later years of the fourteenth or beginning of the fifteenth century.16 It gives the names of the owners and occupiers of all the seliones or strips. They are [p020] divided by balks of turf. They lie in furlongs or quarentenæ. They have frequently headlands or foreræ. Some of the strips are gored, and called gored acres. Many of them are described as butts. Indeed, were it not that the country round Cambridge being flat there are no lynches, almost every one of the features of the system is distinctly visible in this terrier.

The system already decaying.

But this terrier also contains evidence that the system was even then in a state of decay and disintegration. The balks were disappearing, and the strips, though still remembered as strips, were becoming merged in larger portions, so that they lie thrown together sine balca. The mention is frequent of iii. seliones which used to be v., ii. which used to be iv., iii. which used to be viii., and so on. Evidently the meaning and use of the half-acre strips are already gone.

It will be well, therefore, to take another leap, and at once to pass behind the Black Death—that great watershed in economic history—so as to examine the details of the system before rather than after it had sustained the tremendous shock which the death in one year of half the population may well have given to it.

Winslow Manor rolls of Ed. III.

A remarkably excellent opportunity for inquiry is presented by a complete set of manor rolls during the reign of Edward III. for the Manor of Winslow in Buckinghamshire, preserved in the Cambridge University Library.17 [p021]

No evidence could possibly be more to the purpose. Belonging to the Abbey of St. Albans, the rolls were kept with scrupulous accuracy and care. Every change of ownership during the long reign of Edward III. is recorded in regular form; and the year 1348–9—the year of the Black Death—occurring in the course of this reign, and occasioning more changes of ownership than usual, the MS. presents, if one may appropriate a geological expression, something like an economic section of the manor, revealing with unusual clearness the various economic strata in which its holdings were arranged.

The open field.

Before examining these holdings it is needful only to state that here, as in the later examples, the fields of the manor are open fields, divided into furlongs, which in their turn are made up with apparently almost absolute regularity of half-acre strips. Whenever (with very rare exceptions) a change of ownership takes place, and the contents of the holding are described, they turn out to be made up of half-acre pieces, or seliones, scattered all over the fields.

Half-acre strips.

The typical entry on these rolls in such cases is that A. B. surrenders to the lord, or has died holding, a messuage and so many acres of land, of which a half-acre lies in such and such a field, and often in such and such a furlong, between land of C. D. and E. F., another half-acre somewhere else between two other persons' land, another half-acre somewhere else, and so on. If the holding be of 112 acres it is found to be in 3 half-acre pieces, if of 4 acres, in 8 half-acre pieces, and so on, scattered over the fields. Sometimes amongst the half-acres are mentioned still smaller portions, roods and even half-roods or doles [p022] (chiefly of pasture or meadow land), belonging to the holdings, but the division into half-acre strips was clearly the rule.

There can be no doubt, therefore, of the identity of the system seen at work in these manor rolls with that of which some of the débris may still be examined in unenclosed parishes to-day.