Chapter X · THE CONNEXION BETWEEN THE OPEN-FIELD SYSTEM AND SERFDOM OF ENGLAND AND OF THE ROMAN PROVINCES OF GERMANY AND GAUL.

I. THE OPEN-FIELD SYSTEM IN ENGLAND AND IN GERMANY COMPARED.

We now return to the English manorial and open-field system, in order, taking it up where we left it, to trace its connexion with the similar Continental system, and to inquire in what districts the closest resemblances to it are to be found—whether in the un-Romanised north or in the southern districts so long included within the limes of the Roman provinces.

Under the manorial system, the open-field system the shell of serfdom.

The earliest documentary evidence available on English ground left us in full possession of the Saxon manor with its village community of serfs upon it, inhabiting as its shell the open-field system in its most organised form, i.e. with its (generally) three fields, its furlongs, its acre or half-acre strips, its headlands, its yard-lands or bundles of normally thirty acres, scattered all over the fields, the yard-land representing the year's ploughing of a pair of oxen in the team of [p369] eight, and the acre strip the measure of a day's plough-work of the team.

This was the system described in the 'Rectitudines' of the tenth century, and the allusions to the 'gebur,' the 'yard-land,' the 'setene,' the 'gafol,' and the 'week-work' in the laws of Ine carried back the evidence presumably to the seventh century.

Simpler form of open-field husbandry under the tribal system.

But it must not be forgotten that side by side with this manorial open-field system we found an earlier and simpler form of open-field husbandry carried on by the free tribesmen and taeogs of Wales. This simpler system described in the Welsh laws and the 'triads' seemed to be in its main features practically identical with that described also in the Germania of Tacitus. It was an annual ploughing up of fresh grass-land, leaving it to go back again into grass after the year's ploughing. It was, in fact, the agriculture of a pastoral people, with a large range of pasture land for their cattle, a small portion of which annually selected for tillage sufficed for their corn crops. This is clearly the meaning of Tacitus, 'Arva per annos mutant et superest ager.' It is clearly the meaning of the Welsh 'triads,' according to which the tribesman's right extended to his 'tyddyn,' with its corn and cattle yard, and to co-aration of the waste.

Three-field system produced by a three-course rotation of crops.

Nor can there be much mystery in the relation of these two forms of open-field husbandry to each other. In both, the arable land is divided in the ploughing into furlongs and strips. There is co-operation of ploughing in both, the contribution of oxen to the common team of eight in both, the allotment of the strips to the owners of the oxen in rotation, [p370] producing the same scattering of the strips in both. The methods are the same. The difference lies in the application of the methods to two different stages of economic growth. The simple form is adapted to the early nomadic stage of tribal life, and survives even after partial settlement, so long as grassland is sufficiently abundant to allow of fresh ground being broken by the plough each year. The more complex and organised form implies fixed settlement on the same territory, the necessity for a settled agriculture within a definite limit, and the consequent ploughing of the same land over and over again for generations. The three-field system seems to be simply the adaptation of the early open-field husbandry to a permanent three-course rotation of crops.

The yard-land the mark of serfdom.

But there is a further distinguishing feature of the English three-field system which implies the introduction of yet another factor in the complex result, viz. the yard-land. And this indivisible bundle of strips, to which there was always a single succession, was evidently the holding not of a free tribesman whose heirs would inherit and divide the inheritance, but of a serf, to whom an outfit of oxen had been allotted. In fact, the complex and more organised system would naturally grow out of the simpler form under the two conditions of settlement and serfdom.

Now, turning from England to the Continent, we have in the same way various forms of the open-field system to deal with, and in comparing them with the English system their geographical distribution becomes very important.

German authorities on the German system.

Happily, very close attention has recently been given to this subject by German students, and we are [p371] able to rely with confidence on the facts collected by Dr. Landau,554 by Dr. Hanssen,555 and lastly by Dr. August Meitzen in his Ausbreitung der Deutschen in Deutschland,556 and in his still more recent and interesting review of the collected works of Dr. Hanssen.557

Whilst we learn from these writers that much remains to be done before the last word can be said upon so intricate a subject, some general points seem at least to be clearly made out.

In the first place there are some German systems of husbandry which may well be weeded out at once from the rest as not analogous to the Anglo-Saxon three-field system in England.

The Feldgraswirthschaft.

There is the old 'Feldgraswirthschaft,' analogous perhaps to the Welsh co-ploughing of the waste and the shifting 'Arva' of the Germans of Tacitus, which still lingers in the mountain districts of Germany and Switzerland, where corn is a secondary crop to grass.558

The Einzelhöfe.

There are the 'Einzelhöfe' of Westphalia and other districts, i.e. single farms, each consisting mainly of land all in one block, like a modern English farm, but as different as possible from the old English open-field system, with its yard-lands and scattered strips.559

Forest and marsh system.

Further, there is a peculiar form of the open-field system, chiefly found in forest and marsh districts, in which each holding consists generally of one single [p372] long strip of land, reaching from the homestead right across the village territory to its boundary.560 This system, so different from the prevalent Anglo-Saxon system, is supposed to represent comparatively modern colonisation and reclamation of forest and marsh land; and though possibly bearing some analogy to the English fen system, is not that for which we are seeking.

Passing all these by, we come to a peculiar method of husbandry which covers a large tract of country, and which is adopted under both the single farm system and also the open-field system with scattered ownership, but which nevertheless is opposed to the three-field system. It is especially important for our purpose because of its geographical position.

The one-field system

All over the sand and bog district of the north of Germany, crops, mostly of rye and buckwheat, have for centuries been grown year after year on the same land, kept productive by marling and peat manure, on what Hanssen describes as the 'one-field system.' 561 This system is found in Westphalia, East Friesland, Oldenburg, North Hanover, Holland, Belgium. Denmark, Brunswick, Saxony, and East Prussia. Over parts of the district under this one-field system the single-farm system prevails, in others the fields are divided into 'Gewanne' and strips, and there is scattered ownership.

in North Germany.

Now, possibly this one-field system, with its marling and peat manure, may have been the system described by Pliny as prevalent in Belgic Britain and Gaul before the Roman conquest, [p373] but certainly it is not the system prevalent in England under Saxon rule. And yet this district where the one-field system is prevalent in Germany is precisely the district from which, according to the common theory, the Anglo-Saxon invaders of Britain came. It is precisely the district of Germany where the three-field system is conspicuously absent. So that although Nasse and Waitz somewhat hastily suggested that the Saxons had introduced the three-field system into England, Hanssen, assuming that the invaders of England came from the north, confidently denies that this was possible. 'The Anglo-Saxons and the Frisians and Low Germans and Jutes who came with them to England cannot [he writes] have brought the three-field system with them into England, because they did not themselves use it at home in North-west Germany and Jutland.' He adds that even in later times the three-field system has never been able to obtain a firm footing in these coast districts.562

The three-field system

There remains the question, where on the Continent was prevalent that two-or three-field system analogous to the one most generally prevalent on the manors of England?

in the old Suevic and Roman districts.

The result of the careful inquiries of Hanssen, Landau, and Meitzen seems to be, broadly speaking, this, viz., that setting aside the complication which arises in those districts where there has been a Slavic occupation of German ground and a German re-occupation of Slavic ground,563 the ancient three-field system, with its huben of scattered strips, was most [p374] generally prevalent south of the Lippe and the Teutoberger Wald, i.e. in those districts once occupied by the Suevic tribes located round the Roman limes, and still more in those districts within the Roman limes which were once Roman province—the 'Agri Decumates,' Rhætia, and Germania Prima—the present Baden, Wirtemberg, Swabia, and Bavaria, on the German side of the Rhine, and Elsass and the Moselle valley on its Gallic side.564

These once Roman or partly Romanised districts were undoubtedly its chief home. Sporadically and later, it existed further north but not generally.

This general geographical conclusion is very important. But before we can fairly assume either a Roman or South German origin, the similarity of the English and South German systems must be examined in their details and earliest historical traces. Further, the examination must not be confined to the shell. It must be extended also to the serfdom which in Germany as in England, so to speak, lived within it.

In previous chapters some of the resemblances between the English and German systems have incidentally been noticed, but the reader will pardon some repetition for the sake of clearness in the statement of this important comparison. [p375]

II. THE BOUNDARIES, OR 'MARCHÆ.'

The boundaries, or marchæ.

First as to the whole territory or ager occupied by the village community or township. This, by the presentment of the homage of the Hitchin Manor, was described in the record by its boundaries—from such a place to such a place, and so on fill the starting-point was reached again.

In the 'gemæru' of the Saxon charters the same form was used.

In the 'marchæ' of the manors surrendered to the abbey of Lorsch in the seventh and eighth centuries, the same form was used in the Rhine valley.

It is, in fact, as we have seen, a form in use before the Christian era, and described by the Roman 'Agrimensores' as often adopted in recording the 'limites' of irregular territories, to which their rectangular centuriation did not extend.

Now, when we consider this method, it implies permanent settlements close to one another, where even the marshes or forests lying between them have been permanently divided by a fixed line, or it implies that a necessity has arisen to mark off the occupied territory from the ager publicus. It may have been derived from the rough and ready methods of marking divisions of tribe-land during the early and unsettled stages of tribal life. But the German settlements described by Tacitus seem to have been without defined boundaries. 'Agri' were taken possession of according to the number of the settlers, pro numero cultorum. Not till some outside influence compelled final settlement would the necessity for [p376] well-marked boundaries of territories arise. And we have seen that the evidence of local names strongly points to the Roman rule as this settling influence.

In the Lorsch charters the districts included within the 'marchæ' are often, as we have seen, called 'marks.'

III. THE THREE FIELDS, OR 'ZELGEN.'

The three fields.

Next as to the division of the arable land into fields—generally three fields565—representing the annual rotation of crops.

The homage of the Hitchin Manor presented that the common fields within the township had immemoriably been and ought to be kept and cultivated in three successive seasons of—

(1) Tilth-grain,

(2) Etch-grain, and

(3) Fallow.

The three fields are elsewhere commonly known as the—

(1) Winter corn,

(2) Spring corn, and

(3) Fallow.

Universally, the fallow ends at the autumn sowing of the wheat crop of the next season, which is hence called 'winter corn.'

The word etch, or eddish, or edish, occurs in Tusser, and means the stubble of the previous crop [p377] of whatever kind. Thus, in the 'Directions for February,' he says,—

Etch-grain sown on the stubble of a previous crop.

This is evidently to prepare the stubble of the last year's corn crop for the spring sown bean or other crop; for under the same month he says,—

In the directions for the October sowing are the following lines:—

And again,—

Tilth-grain sown on the fallow.

'Etch-grain' is therefore the crop, generally oats or beans, sown in spring after ploughing the stubble of the wheat crop, which itself was best sown if possible upon the fallow, and so was called the 'tilth-grain.'

Breach-corn.

The oats or beans grown on the wheat stubble were sometimes called 'Breach-corn,' and Breach-land was land prepared for a second crop.570 [p378]

Where shall we find these words and things on the Continent?

Looking to the Latin words used for the three fields, it is obvious that these were sometimes regarded as three separate ploughings—araturæ, or culturæ,—or as so many sowings—sationes,571—just as in the north of England they are called 'falls,' or 'fallows,' which have to be ploughed.

Names for the three fields, 'Felder,' 'Sationes,' 'Zelgen.'

In North Germany, where they occur, they are generally simply called 'felder;' 572 in France around Paris they were called in the ninth century 'sationes;' 573 but in South Germany and Switzerland the usual word for each field is Zelg, which Dr. Landau connects with the Anglo-Saxon 'tilgende' (tilling), and the later English 'tilth,' one of the Hitchin words. And he says that Zelg strictly means only the ploughed field574 (aratura), though used for all the three. The three fields were thus spoken of as three tilths. The word 'Zelg' we have already found in the St. Gall charters in the eighth century, and Dr. Landau points out other instances of the same date of its use in the districts of Swabia, the middle Rhine, and later in the Inn Valley.

'Esch,' and the Gothic 'Attisk.'

On the other hand, in Westphalia, in Baden, and especially in Upper Swabia and Upper Bavaria, as far as the river Isar, and also in Switzerland, the word Esch is the one in use,575 the word being used in [p379] Westphalia, also for the whole arable area.576 Esch also was in use at the date of the earliest form of the Bavarian laws (in the seventh century). The hedge put up in defence of the sown field is there called an 'ezzisczun.' 577 Still earlier, in the fourth century, further East the open fields seem to have been called 'attisk;' for Ulphilas, in his translation of Mark ii. 23, speaks of the disciples walking over the 'attisk'—i.e. over the 'etch,' or 'eddish'—instead of as in the Anglo-Saxon translation over the 'æcera.' Here, therefore, we have another of the Hitchin words.

'Brachfrichte.'

These words point to connexion with South Germany.

In Hesse, according to Dr. Landau, the three fields are spoken of as—

(1) In der Lentzen.

(2) In der Brache.

(3) In der Rure.

On the Main, in the fifteenth century, they were spoken of as—

(1) Lenz frichte.

(2) Brach frichte.

(3) Rur frichte.

In Elsass, in the fourteenth century, and on the Danube—

(1) Brochager (Brach field)

(2) Rurager (Fallow field)

were used, and Dr. Landau says that Esch is sometimes put in contrast with 'Brach.' 578 Whatever may be [p380] the exact meaning of the word Brach—whether referring to the breaking of the rotation or the breaking of the stubble—there can be no doubt of the identity of the word with the English Breach and Breach-corn.

It appears, therefore, that in South Germany, and especially in the districts once Roman province, the three fields representing the rotation of crops for many centuries have been known by names closely resembling those used in England.

IV. THE DIVISION OF THE FIELDS INTO FURLONGS AND ACRES.

Passing next to the divisions of the open fields, we take first the Furlongs or Shots (the Latin Quarentenæ).

'Shot.'

The word 'Shot' probably is simply the Anglo-Saxon 'sceot,' or division; but it is curious to find in a document of 1318 mention of 'unam peciam, quod vulgariter dicitur Schoet' at Passau, near the junction of the Inn with the Danube.579

'Gewann.'

The usual word in Middle and South Germany is 'Gewende,' in Lower Germany 'Wande' or 'Wanne,' or 'Gewann'—words which no less than the Furlong580 refer to the length of the furrow and the turning of the plough at the end of it.

Headland.

The headland, on which the plough was turned, [p381] is also found in the German three-field system as in England.

'Voracker.'

In a Frankish document quoted by Dr. Landau, it is called the 'Voracker,' elsewhere it is known as the 'Anwänder' (versura), or 'Vorwart.' 581

The Lince called 'Rain.'

In the English system the furlongs were divided into strips or acres by turf balks left in the ploughing, and, as we have seen, on hill-sides, the strips became terraces, and the balks steep banks called 'linces.' It will be remembered that these were produced by the practice of always turning the sod downhill in the ploughing. There are many linces as far north as in the district of the 'Teutoberger Wald,' 582 and they occur in great numbers as far south as the Inn Valley, all the way up to St. Mauritz and Pontresina. Although in many places the terraces in the Engadine are now grass-land, it is well known to the peasantry that they were made by ancient ploughing.

The German word for the turf slope of these terraces is 'Rain,' and, like the word balk, it means a strip of unploughed turf.583 It is sometimes used for the terrace itself. Precisely the same word is used for the similar terraces in the Dales of Yorkshire, which are still called by the Dalesmen 'reeans' or 'reins.' 584 Terraces of the same kind are found in [p382] Scotland; and when Pennant in 1772 asked what they were called, he was told that they were 'baulks.' 585

The Celtic Rhan.

Both words suggest a wider than merely German origin. 'Balk' is as thoroughly a Welsh word586 as it is English and German. 'Rain' can hardly be other than the Welsh 'Rhan' (a division), or 'Rhyn' and 'grwn' (a ridge), with which the name of the open-field system in Ireland and Scotland—'run-rig'—is no doubt connected. The English word lince or linch, with the Anglo-Saxon 'hlinc' and 'hlince,' is perhaps allied to the Anglo-Saxon 'Hlynian,' or 'Hlinian,' to lean, making its participle 'hlynigende;' and this, and the old High German 'hlinen,' are surely connected with the Latin and Italian 'inclinare' and the French 'enclin.' As we have seen, the Roman 'Agrimensores' called these slopes or terraces 'supercilia.'

Next let us ask, whence came the English acre strip itself?

The acre strip a day's work.

It represented, as we have seen, a day's work at ploughing. Hence the German Morgen and Tagwerk, in the Alps Tagwan and Tagwen; and hence also, as early as the eighth century, the Latin 'jurnalis' and [p383] 'diurnalis.' 587 In early Roman times Varro describes the jugerum [or jugum]—the Roman acre—as 'quod juncti boves uno die exarare possint.' 588

The division of arable open fields into day-works was therefore ancient. It was also widely spread, and by no means confined to the three-field system. It was common to the co-aration of both free tribesmen and 'taeogs' in Wales; and the Fellahin of Palestine to this moment divide their open fields into day-works for the purpose of easy division among them, according to their ploughs or shares in a plough.589

In the Irish open-field system, as we have seen, the land was very early divided into equal 'ridges,' for in the passage quoted, referring to the pressure of population in the seventh century, the complaint was, not that the people received smaller ridges than in former times, but fewer of them. These ridges, however, may or may not have been 'day-works.'

But perhaps, outside of the three-field system, a still more widely spread practice was that of dividing the furlongs or larger divisions into as many strips as there were sharers, without reference to the size of the strips. This practice seems to be the one adopted in many parts of Germany, in Russia, and in the East, and it is in common use in the western districts of Scotland to this day whenever a piece of land is held by a number of crofters as joint holders.590 [p384]

It is doubtful whether the division into acre strips representing day-works, and divided from their neighbours by 'raine' or balks, was one of the features of the original German system of ploughing. It is chiefly, if not entirely, in the districts within or near to the Roman 'limes,' or colonised after the conquest of the Roman provinces, that it appears to have been prevalent.591

With regard to the word 'acre,' it is probably of very ancient origin.

The German 'acker' has the wider sense of ploughed land in general, but sometimes in East Friesland,592 and also in South Germany and German Switzerland it has still the restricted meaning of the acre strip laid out for ploughing.593

We now pass to the form of the acre strip or day's work in ploughing.

Roman jugerum.

The Roman actus or furrow length was 120 feet, or twelve 10-feet rods. The actus quadratus was 120 feet square. The jugerum was composed of two of these actus quadrati. It was therefore in length still an actus or furrow of 120 feet, and it was twice as broad as it was long; whilst the length of the English acre is ten times its breadth.

Strips of the same form as the English acre in France and in Bavaria in the seventh century.

Thus the English acre varied much in its shape [p385] from the Roman jugerum. Its exact measurements are found in the mappa, or measure of the day-work of the tenants of the abbot of St. Remy at Rheims, which is described in the Polyptique of the ninth century as forty perches in length and four in width.594 It occurs again in the 'napatica' of the Polyptique of the abbey of St. Maur, near Nantes, which was of precisely the same dimensions.595 And we have seen that the 'andecena,' or measure of the day's work of ploughing for the coloni and servi of the Church, was described by the Bavarian laws in the seventh century as of precisely the same form as the English acre, forty rods in length and four rods in width, only that the rods were Roman rods of 10 feet.

We have to go, therefore, to Bavaria in the seventh century for the earliest instance of the form of the English acre. And in this earliest instance it had a distinctly servile connexion, as it had also in the French cases quoted. In all it fixed the day's task-work of semi-servile tenants.

Further, the Bavarian 'andecena,' if the spelling of the word may be trusted, may have another curious and interesting connexion with the Saxon acre, to which attention must be once more turned.

The form in which the 'agrarium' or tithe-rent was taken.

We have seen that the tithes were to be paid in Saxon times in the produce of 'every tenth acre as it [p386] is traversed by the plough.' The Roman land-tribute in Rhætia and the 'Agri Decumates' also consisted of tithes. If these latter tithes were paid as the Saxon ecclesiastical tithes were, by every tenth strip being set aside for them in the ploughing, the words of the Bavarian law have an important significance. The judex or villicus is required by the laws to see that the colonus or servus shall render by way of agrarium or land tribute according to what he has, from every thirty modii three modii (i.e. the tenth)—'lawful andecenæ (andecenas legitimas), that is (the rod having ten feet) four rods in width and forty in length, to plough, to sow, to hedge, to gather, to lead, and to store.' 596

Now why is the peculiar phraseology used 'from 30 modii 3 modii'? Surely either because three modii, according to the 'Agrimensores,' went to the juger, or because the actual acre of the locality was sown with three modii of seed,597 so that in either case it was a way of saying 'from every ten acres one acre.' Further, the form and measure of the acre is described, and it is called the 'lawful andecena.' The word itself in its peculiar etymology possibly contains a reference to the one strip set apart in ten for the tithe. Be this as it may, here again, in another point connected with the 'acre,' we find the nearest and earliest analogies in South Germany within the old Roman province. [p387]

Lastly, we have still to explain the reason of the difference between the form of the Roman 'actus' and 'jugerum' and that of the early Bavarian and English acre.

The Egyptian arura was 100 cubits square.598

The Greek πλέθρον was 10 rods or 100 feet square.599

The Roman actus was 12 rods or 120 feet square.

The Roman 'jugerum' was made up of two 'actus' placed side by side, and was the area to be ploughed in a day.

Form of the acre or day's-work connected with the number of oxen in the team.

In all these cases the yoke of two oxen is assumed, and the length of the acre, or 'day-work,' is the length of the furrow which two oxen could properly plough at a stretch.600

The reason of the increased length of the Bavarian and the English acre was, no doubt, connected with the fact of the larger team.601

If the Bavarian team was of eight oxen, like that of the English and Welsh and Scotch common plough, it would seem perfectly natural that with four times the strength of team the furrow might also be assumed to be four times the usual length. In this way the Greek and Roman furrow of 10 or 12 rods may naturally have been extended north of the Alps into the 'furlong' of forty rods. [p388] . Now, there is a remarkable proof that long furrows, and therefore probably large teams, were used in Bavaria, then within the Roman province of Rhætia, as early as the second century. The remains of the Bavarian 'Hochäcker' are described as running uninterruptedly for sometimes a kilomètre and more, i.e. five times the length of the English furlong. And a Roman road with milestones, dating as early as A.D. 201, in one place runs across these long furrows in a way which seems to prove that they were older than the road.602

The Bavarian 'Hochäcker' and their long furrows.

Professor Meitzen argues from this fact that these 'Hochäcker' with long furrows are pre-German in these districts, and in the absence of evidence of their Celtic origin he inclines to attribute them to the husbandry of officials or contractors on the imperial waste lands, who had at their command hundreds of slaves and heavy plough teams.

This may be the solution of the puzzling question of the origin of the Bavarian 'Hochäcker,' but the presence of the team of eight oxen in Wales and Scotland as well as in England, and the mention of teams of six and eight oxen in the Vedas603 as used by Aryan husbandmen in the East, centuries earlier, makes it possible, if not probable, that the Romans, in this instance as in so many others, adopted and adapted to their purpose a practice which they found already at work, connected perhaps with a heavier soil and a clumsier plough than they were used to south of the Alps.604 [p389]

V. THE HOLDINGS—THE YARD-LAND OR HUB.

We now pass from the strips to the holdings.

The typical English holding of a serf in the open fields was the yard-land of normally thirty acres (ten [p390] scattered acres in each of the three fields), to which an outfit of two oxen was assigned as 'setene' or 'stuht,' and which descended from one generation to another as a complete indivisible whole.

The hub or yard-land.

The German word for the yard-land is hof or hub; in its oldest form huoba, huba, hova.605 And Aventinus, writing early in the sixteenth century of the holdings in Bavaria in the thirteenth century, distinguishes the hof as the holding belonging to a quadriga, or yoke of four oxen, taxed at sixty 'asses,' from the hub or holding of the biga or yoke of two oxen, and taxed [p391] at thirty 'asses.' 606 If the tax in this case were one 'as' per acre, then the hof contained sixty acres, and the hub thirty acres. So that, as in the yard-land, ten acres in each field would go under the three-field system to the pair of oxen.

Wide prevalence of the hub of thirty morgen in Middle and South Germany.

The hub of thirty morgen seems to have been the typical holding of the serf over a very wide area, according to the earliest records. Whilst as a rule absent from North Germany, Dr. Landau traces it in Lower Saxony, in Engern, in Thuringia, in Grapfeld, in Hesse, on the Middle Rhine and the Moselle, in the old Niederlahngau, Rheingau, Wormsgau, Lobdengau and Spiergau, in Elsass, in Swabia, and in Bavaria.607

The double huf of sixty morgen also occurs on the Weser and the Rhine in Lower Saxony and in Bavaria.608 The word 'huf' first occurs in a document of A.D. 474.609

The passage in the Bavarian laws of the seventh century, already referred to, declaring the tithe to be 'three modii from every thirty' modii—or one 'lawful andecena' from each ten that, in the typical case taken, 'a man has'—would seem to suggest that ten andecenæ or acre strips in each field (or thirty in all) was a typical holding, whilst the use of the Roman rod of ten feet points to a Roman influence.

The double 'hub' of sixty morgen. The outfit of oxen.

Further, the fact of the prevalence of the double and single huf or hub of sixty and thirty acres over so large an area once Roman province, irresistibly suggests a connexion with the double and single yoke [p392] of oxen given as outfit to the Roman veteran, with such an allowance of seed as to make it probable, as we have seen, that the double yoke received normally fifty or sixty jugera, and the single yoke twenty-five or thirty jugera.

It is worth remembering, further, that in the Bavarian law before quoted, limiting the week-work of the servi on the ecclesiastical estates to three days a week, an exception is made allowing unlimited week-work to be demanded from servi who had been supplied with their outfit of oxen de novo by their lord. So that there is a chain of evidence as to the system of supplying the holders of 'yard-lands,' 'huben,' and 'yokes,' with an outfit of oxen, of which the Kelso 'stuht,' the Saxon 'setene,' the outfit of the servus under this Bavarian law, and that of the Roman veteran, are links.610

It is hardly needful to repeat that it does not follow from this that the system of allotting about thirty acres (varying in size with the locality) to the pair of oxen was a Roman invention. The clear fact is that it was a system followed in Roman provinces under the later empire, as well as in Germany and England afterwards; and, as the holding of thirty acres was found to be the allotment to each 'tate' or household under the Irish tribal system, it may possibly have had an earlier origin and a wider prevalence than the period or extent of Roman rule.

Scattering of the strips composing them.

The scattering of the strips composing a yard-land or hub, over the open fields should also be once more mentioned in comparing the two. It was not [p393] confined to the 'yard-land' or 'hub.' It arose, as we have seen, in Wales, from the practice of joint ploughing, and was the result of the method of dividing the joint produce, probably elsewhere also, under the tribal system. It is the method of securing a fair division of common land in Scotland and Ireland and Palestine to this day, no less than under the English and German three-field system. And the remarkable passage from Siculus Flaccus has been quoted, which so clearly describes a similar scattered ownership, resulting probably from joint agriculture carried on by 'vicini,' as often to be met with in his time on Roman ground. This passage proves that the Roman holding (like the Saxon yard-land and the German hub) might be composed of a bundle of scattered pieces; but this scattering was too widely spread from India to Ireland for it to be, in any sense, distinctively Roman. It perhaps resulted, as we have seen, from the heaviness of the soil or the clumsiness of the plough, and the necessity of co-operation between free or semi-servile tenants, in order to produce a plough team of the requisite strength according to the custom of the country; and this necessity probably arose most often in the provinces north of the Alps.

The single succession to the 'hub' and 'yard-land.'

Another point distinctive of the 'yard-land' and the 'hub' was the absence of division among heirs, the single succession, the indivisibility of the bundle of scattered strips in the holding. And this finds its nearest likeness perhaps, as we have seen, in the probably single succession of the semi-servile holder, or mere 'usufructuarius' under Roman law, and especially under the semi-military rule of the border provinces. [p394]

The Saxon 'Gebur' and the High German 'Gipur.'

Lastly, before leaving the comparison between the yard-land and hub it may be asked why the serf who held it in England was called a Gebur.

The word villanus of the Domesday Survey is associated with other words, such as villicus, villata, villenage, all connected with serfdom, and all traceable through Romance dialects to the Roman 'villa.'

But the Anglo-Saxon word was 'Gebur.' It was the Geburs who were holders of yard-lands.

We trace this word Gebur in High German dialects. We find it in use in the High German translation of the laws of the Alamanni, called the 'Speculi Suevici,' where free men are divided into three classes:—

(1) The 'semperfrien' = lords with vassals under them.

(2) The 'mittlerfrien' = the men or vassals of the lords.

(3) The 'geburen' = liberi incolæ, or 'fri-lant-sæzzen' [i.e. not slaves].611

The word 'gebur' or 'gipur' occurs also in the High German of Otfried's 'Paraphrase of the Gospels,' 612 of the ninth century, and in the Alamannic dialect of Notger's Psalms for vicinus.613

Here, again, the South German connexion seems to be the nearest to the Anglo-Saxon. [p395]

VI. THE HIDE, THE HOF, AND THE CENTURIA.

The 'hide,' 'familla,' 'casatum,' and 'hiwisc.'

From the yard-land, or hub, the holding of a serf, we may pass to the typical holding of the full free landholder, connected in England with the full team of eight oxen.

The Saxon hide, or the familia of Bede, was Latinised in Saxon charters into 'casatum.' We have found in the St. Gall charters the word 'casa' used for the homestead. The present Romanish word for house is 'casa,' and for the verb 'to dwell,' 'casar.' And there is the Italian word 'casata,' still meaning a family. Thus the connexion between the 'familia' of Bede and the 'casatum' of the charters is natural. Bede wrote more classical Latin than the ecclesiastical scribes in the charters. The hide was the holding of a family.614 Hence it was sometimes, like the yard-land or holding of a servile family, called a 'hiwisc,' which was Anglo-Saxon, and also High German for family.615 But the Saxon hide, also, was translated into ploughland or carucate, corresponding with the full team of eight oxen.

The 'carucate,' 'sulung,' or plough-land.

Generally in Kent, and sometimes in Sussex, Berks, and Essex, we found in addition to or instead of the hide or carucate, or 'terra unius aratri,' solins, sullungs, or swullungs—the land pertaining to a 'suhl,' the Anglo-Saxon word for plough. This word is [p396] surely of Roman rather than of German origin. The Piedmontese 'sloira,' and the Lombardic 'sciloira,' and the Old French 'silleoire,' are surely allied to the Romanish 'suilg,' and the Latin 'sulcus.'

The 'gioc,' or 'jugum.'

Again, in Kent the quarter of a 'sulung' (answering to the yard-land or virgate of other parts) is called in the early charters a 'gioc,' 'ioclet,' or 'iochlet,' 616 i.e. a yoke or small-yoke of land. We have seen in the St. Gall charters, also, mention of 'juchs' or 'jochs,' which, however, were apparently jugera. This word gioc is surely allied to the Italian 'giogo,' and the Latin jugum.

The 'hide' and 'centuria' the typical free holding.

Here, then, we have the hide the typical holding of a free family, as the centuria was under Roman law. A free Saxon thane might hold many hides, and so might and did the lord of a Roman villa hold more than one 'centuria' within its bounds. Still Columella took as his type of a Roman farm the 'centuria' of 200 acres,617 and calculated how much seed, how many oxen, how many opera, or day-works of slaves, or 'coloni' were required to till it. The hide, double or single, was also a land measure, and contained eight or four yard-lands, and so also was the 'centuria' a land measure divisible into eight normal holdings allotted with single yokes. Both also became, as we have seen, units of assessment. But in England the hide was the unit. Under the Roman system of taxation the jugum was the unit. [p397]

This variation, however, confirms the connexion. The Roman jugum, or yoke of two oxen, made a complete plough. Nothing less than the hide was the complete holding in England, because a team of eight oxen was required for English ploughing. The yard-land was only a fractional holding, incomplete for purposes of ploughing without co-operation. Hence it would seem that the complete plough was really the unit in both cases.

The Saxon 'hidation' and the Roman 'jugatio.'

How closely the English hidation followed the lines of the Roman 'jugatio' has already been seen. When to the many resemblances of the hide to the 'centuria,' and of the 'jugum' to the virgate, regarded as units of assessment, are now added the other connecting links found in this chapter, in things, in figures, and in words, between the Saxon open-field system, and that of the districts of Upper Germany, so long under Roman rule, the English hidation may well be suspected to go back to Roman times, and to be possibly a survival of the Roman jugation. When Henry of Huntingdon, in describing the Domesday Survey, instead of saying that inquiry was made how many hides and how many virgates there were, uses the words 'quot jugata et quot virgata terræ,' 618 he at any rate used the exact words which describe what in the Codex Theodosianus is spoken of as taxation 'per jugationem.' 619

Not, as already said, that the Romans introduced into Britain the division of land according to plough teams, and the number of oxen contributed [p398] to the plough team. It would grow, as we have seen, naturally out of tribal arrangements whenever the tribes settled and became agricultural, instead of wandering about with their herds of cattle. It was found in Wales and Ireland and Scotland, in Bohemia, apparently in Slavonic districts also and further east.620 It is much more likely that the Romans, according to their usual custom, adopted a barbarian usage and seized upon an existing and obvious unit as the basis of provincial taxation.

Roman tributum in Frisia paid in hides.

The Frisian tribute of hides was perhaps an example of this. The Frisians were a pastoral people, and a hide for every so many oxen was as ready a mode of assessing the tribute as counting the plough teams would be in an agricultural district. The word 'hide,' which still baffles all attempts to explain its origin, may possibly have had reference to a similar tribute. Even in England it does not follow that it was in its origin connected with the plough team. Its real equivalent was the familia, or casatum—the land of a family—and in pastoral districts of England and Wales the Roman tribute may possibly have been, if not a hide from each plough team, a hide from every family holding cattle; just as in A.D. 1175 Henry II. bound his Irish vassal, Roderic O'Connor, to pay annually 'de singulis animalibus decimum corium placabile mercatoribus'—perhaps a tenth of the hides he himself received as tribute from his own tribesmen.621 The supposition of such an origin of the connexion of the word 'hide' with the 'land of a family' [p399] or of a plough team is mere conjecture; but the fact of the connexion is clear. All these three things, the hide, the hiwisce, and the sullung, and their subdivision the yard-land, were the units of British 'hidation,' just as the centuria and the jugum were the units of the Roman 'jugatio.'

VII. THE GAFOL AND GAFOL-YRTH.

Passing now to the serfdom and the services under which the 'yard-lands' and the 'huben' were held, it may at least be said that their practical identity suggests a common origin.

We learned from the Rectitudines and from the Laws of Ine, to make a distinction between the two component parts of the obligations of the 'gebur' in respect of his yard-land.

There was (1) the gafol, and (2) the week-work.

The gafol was found to be a semi-servile incident to the yard-land. The week-work was the most servile one.

A man otherwise free and possessing a homestead already, could, under the laws of Ine, hire a yard-land of demesne land and pay gafol for it, without incurring liability to week-work. But if the lord found for him both the yard-land and the homestead, then he was a complete 'gebur' or 'villanus,' and must do week-work also.

The Saxon 'gafol' and 'gafol-yrth.'

Taking the gafol first, and descending to details, it was found to be complex—i.e. it included gafol and gafol-yrth. [p400]

The gafol of the 'gebur,' as stated in the Rectitudines, was this:—

For gafol proper:— 10d. at Michaelmas. 23 sesters of beer, and 2 fowls, at Martinmas. 1 lamb at Easter, or 2d.

For gafolyrth:—the ploughing of 3 acres, and sowing of it from the 'gebur's' own barn.

Comparing the gafol proper with the census of the St. Gall charters, and the tribute of the 'servi' of the Church under the Alamannic laws of A.D. 622, the resemblance was found to be remarkably close.

The tribute of the 'servi' of the Church was thus stated in the latter:—

15 siclæ of beer.

A sound spring pig.

2 modia of bread.

5 fowls.

20 eggs.

As regards this tribute in kind the likeness is obvious, and it further so closely resembles the food-rent of the Welsh free tribesmen as to suggest that it may have been a survival of ancient tribal dues—a suggestion which the word 'gafol' itself confirms. It seems to be connected with the Abgabe, or food gifts of the German tribesmen.622

Possible connexion with Roman tributum.

We saw that the word gafol was the equivalent of tributum in the Saxon translation of the Gospels. 'Does your master pay tribute?' 'Gylt he gafol?'

Further, the French evidence seems to show [p401] that the later manorial payments in kind and services upon Frankish manors were, to some extent, a survival of the old Roman exactions in Gaul.623 And the tribute of the Alamannic and Bavarian laws, and of the St. Gall and other charters, was found to be equally clearly a survival of the Roman tributum in the German province of Rhætia and the 'Agri Decumates.'

The Saxon 'gafol-yrth' and the Roman 'agrarium' or tithe-rent.

But in addition to the 'gafol' in kind, there was the gafol-yrth; and of this also we found in the St. Gall charters numerous examples. In the many cases where the owner of homesteads and land surrendered them to the Abbey, and henceforth paid tribute to the Abbey, there was not only the tribute in kind, but also the ploughing of so many acres, sometimes of one, sometimes of two, and sometimes of one in each zelga or field—to be ploughed, and reaped, and carried by the tenant. The combination of the dues in kind and in ploughing, with sometimes other services, made up the tributum in servitium—i.e. the gafol of the tributarius, or 'gafol-gelder,' which he paid under the Alamannic laws to his lord, the latter thenceforth paying the public tributum for the land to the State.

Perhaps we may go one step further.

Not always a tenth.

From the remarkable resemblance of the English gafol-yrth and its South German equivalent the inference was drawn that this peculiar rent taken in the form of the ploughing of a definite number of acres, was probably a survival of the Roman tenths, [p402] or other proportion of produce claimed as rent from settlers on the ager publicus of the 'Agri Decumates,' and of Rhætia. Indications were found that the agrarium, or tenth of the arable produce, may have been taken in actual acres like the Saxon tithes—i.e. in the produce of so many 'andecenæ,' the ploughing, sowing, reaping, and garnering of which were done by the tenant.

But under Roman usage the proportion taken was not always a tenth. The State rent was nominally a tithe. But it was in fact so extortionately gathered as sometimes in Sicily to treble the tithe.624 Hyginus also says that the 'vectigal,' or tax, was taken in some provinces in a certain part of the crop, in some a fifth, in others a seventh.625 In Italy the dues from the Agri Medietates perhaps surviving in the later métayer system, amounted sometimes to one-half. At any rate, the proportion varied.

Now the Saxon 'gafol-yrth' of the yard-land of thirty acres seems, according to the 'Rectitudines,' as we have seen, to have been the produce of three acres in the wheat-field, ploughed by the 'gebur' and sown with seed from his own barn. For it will be remembered that the first season after the yard-land was given there was to be no gafol, and in the gebur's outfit only seven out of the ten acres in the wheat-field [p403] were to be handed over to him already sown, leaving three unsown, i.e. probably the three which otherwise he must have sown for the gafol-yrth due to his lord. As ten acres of the yard-land were probably always in fallow, three acres of wheat was a heavier gafol-yrth than a fairly gathered tithe would have been.

It would therefore seem probable that as the 'gafol' in kind may be traced back to the Roman tributum, itself perhaps a survival of the tribal food-rents of the conquered provinces, so the 'gafol-yrth' may be traced back to the Roman decumæ, or other proportion of the crop due by way of land-tax or rent to the State. And this survival of the complex tribute or gafol, made up of its two separate elements, from Roman to Saxon times, becomes all the more striking when it is considered also that it was due from a normal holding with an outfit of a pair of oxen, both in the case of the Saxon yard-land and of the Roman veteran's allotment.

VIII. THE BOON-WORK AND WEEK-WORK OF THE SERF.

The Saxon 'boon-work' and the Roman 'sordida munera.'

Proceeding still further, besides the gafol and gafol-yrth, and yet distinct from the week-work, was the liability of the serfs on the Saxon manor to certain boon-work or services ad preces; sometimes in ploughing or reaping a certain number of acres of the lord's demesne land in return for grass land or other advantages, or without any special equivalent; sometimes in going errands or carrying goods to market or otherwise, generally known as averagium. 'He shall land-gafol pay, and shall ridan and averian [p404] and lade lædan' for his lord. So this boon-work in addition to 'gafol' is described in the 'Rectitudines.'

The various kinds of manorial 'averagium' were, as we have seen, often called in mediæval Latin angariæ, a going on errands or postal service; paraveredi, or packhorse services; and carroperæ, or waggon services.

We have seen how these services resembled the angariæ and the parangariæ and paraveredi, which were included among the 'sordida munera' or 'obsequiæ' of the Theodosian Code in force in Rhætia in the fourth century, found still surviving, though transformed into manorial services, in the same districts in the seventh century and afterwards, under the Bavarian laws and in the monastic charters. The carrying services and other boon-work on Saxon manors closely resembled those of the Frankish charters and the Bavarian laws, and probably therefore shared their Roman origin.

The week-work of the serf.

There remains to complete the serfdom its most servile incident, the week-work—that survival of the originally unrestricted claim of the lord of the Roman villa to his slave's labour which, limited, as we have seen, according to the evidence of the Alamannic laws, under the influence of Christian humanity by the monks or clergy, in respect of the servi on their estates, to three days a week, became the mediæval triduanum servitium. The words of the Alamannic law are worth re-quoting.

'Servi dimidiam partem sibi et dimidiam in dominico arativum reddant. Et si super hæc est, SICUT SERVI ECCLESIASTICI ita faciunt, tres dies sibi et tres in dominico.'

Let servi do plough service, half for themselves and half in demesne. And if there be any further [service] let them work as the servi of the Church, three days for themselves, and three in demesne. [p405]

This remarkable passage in the Alamannic code of A.D. 622 seems to be the earliest version extant of the Magna Charta of the agricultural servus, who thus early upon ecclesiastical estates was transformed from a slave into a serf.

IX. THE CREATION OF SERFS AND THE GROWTH OF SERFDOM.

Serfdom recruited from above and from below.

There is yet another point in which the correspondence between British and Continental usages is worth remarking.

The community in serfdom on a lord's estate was both by Saxon and Continental usage recruited from above and from below.

Free-men become serfs.

Free men from above, by voluntary arrangement with a lord, could and did descend into serfdom. The Saxon free tenant could, by free contract, arrange to take a yard-land, and if he were already provided with a homestead and oxen, he became a 'gafol-gelder,' or tributarius of his lord, without incurring the liability to the more servile 'week-work,' just as was the case when, under the Alamannic laws, free men made surrender of their holdings to the Abbey of St. Gall. In both cases, as we saw, week-work was added if the lord found the homestead and the outfit.

Slaves become serfs.

On the other hand, whenever a lord provided his slave with an outfit of oxen, and gave him a part in the ploughing, he rose out of slavery into serfdom. To speak more correctly, he rose into that middle class of tenants who, by whatever name they were [p406] known at first, afterwards became confounded together in the ranks of mediæval serfdom.

Grades in serfdom during the period of transition.

'Tributarii,' 'coloni,' and 'liti.'

There were, in fact, grades in the community in serfdom not only like those of the Saxon geburs and cottiers, but also corresponding to the historical origin of the serfs. Thus, as we have seen in the 'Polyptique d'Irminon' and in many other cartularies and surveys of monastic estates, there are coloni and liti among the serfs, names bearing witness to the historical origin of the serfs, though the difference between them had all but vanished.

Slaves made into these.

The læts of the laws of Ethelbert.

There is a passage in the Ripuarian laws, 'If any one shall make his slave into a "tributarius," or a "litus," &c.' 626 The 'lidus' of the 'Lex Salica' was under a lordship, and classed with 'servi,' and by a legal process he could be set free.627 We have noticed the passage in the Theodosian Code which speaks of 'coloni' and 'tributarii' on British estates, and also the mention by Ammianus Marcellinus of 'tributarii' in Britain. We have noticed also the three grades of 'læts,' the only class of tenants mentioned in the laws of Ethelbert.

Survivals of the period of transition in Britain.

Now, whatever doubt there might be as to what were the 'læts' on Kentish 'hams' and 'tuns' in the sixth century, if they stood alone as isolated phenomena; taken together with the 'tributarii' and 'coloni' and 'liti' on Continental manors, there can be hardly any doubt that they belonged to the same middle [p407] class of semi-servile tenants to which allusion has been made. Their presence on the manorial 'hams' and 'tuns' of England revealed in the earliest historical record after the Saxon Conquest, taken in connexion with the many other points brought together in this chapter, makes the inference very strong indeed that they, like the 'coloni,' 'tributarii,' and 'liti' on Continental manors, were a survival from that period of transition from Roman to German rule, during which the names of the various classes of semi-servile tenants, afterwards merged in the common status of mediæval serfdom, still preserved traces of their origin.

X. THE CONFUSION IN THE STATUS OF THE TENANTS ON ENGLISH AND GERMAN MANORS.

Serfs free in status unfree in tenure.

In one sense both in England and Germany the holders of the 'yard-lands' and 'huben,' though serfs, were free. As regards their lords they were serfs. As regards the slaves they were free. In this respect they resembled very closely the Roman 'coloni' on a private villa.

Grades of manorial tenants.

On the Frankish manors there were two classes of these semi-servile tenants—'mansi ingenuiles,' who were free from the 'week-work;' and 'mansi serviles,' from whom 'week-work' was due. Probably owing to the nature of the Saxon conquest the first of these classes seems to have practically become absorbed in the other. The laws of Ine, indeed, mention the gafol-gelder who, providing his own homestead, did not become liable to 'week-work' like the 'gebur.' But [p408] in the statements of the services on the manors of Hisseburne and Tidenham no such class appears. In the 'Rectitudines' there is no class mentioned between the thane, who is lord of the manor, and the 'geneats'—i.e. the 'gebur' and the 'cotsetl.' In the Domesday Survey there are no tenants above the villani, as a general rule, except in the Danish districts, where the 'Sochmanni' and the 'liberi homines' appear.

Comparing the status of English and German holders of 'yard-lands' and 'huben,' the resemblances are remarkable, and they confirm the suggestion of a common origin. Both are 'adscripti glebæ.' In both cases there is the absence of division among heirs. In both the succession is single, and in theory at the will of the lord. In both there are the gafol and customary services.

In both cases there is the distinction in grade of serfdom between the man who freely becomes the holder of a yard-land or hub by his own surrender, or by voluntary submission to the semi-servile tenure, and the man who is a nativus or born serf.

In both cases there is a regular contribution towards military service or the equipment of a soldier, and apparently no bar in status from actual service, though doubtless in a semi-menial position.

The confusion perhaps partly a survival from Roman provincial conditions.

In all these points we have noticed strong analogies between the semi-free and semi-servile conditions of the various classes of tenants on Roman villas, and on the Roman public lands, which we have spoken of as the great provincial manor of the Roman Empire. And the natural inference seems to be, that even the curious confusion of the free and servile status may [p409] be, in part, a survival of the like confusion in the Roman provinces. It naturally grew up under the semi-military rule of the German provinces, and possibly in Britain also; whilst the Saxon conquest of the latter, no doubt, as we have said, tended to reduce the confusion into something like simplicity by fusing together classes of semi-servile tenants of various historical origins, in the one common class of the later 'geneats' or 'villani,' in whose status the old confusion, however, survived.

XI. RESULT OF THE COMPARISON.

Strong evidence of connexion between Britain and the South German provinces during Roman rule, in the serfdom and in the open-field system which was its shell.

To sum up the result of the comparison made in this chapter between the English and the Continental open-field system and serfdom. The English and South-German systems at the time of the earliest records in the seventh century were to all intents and purposes apparently identical.

The mediæval serf, judging from the evidence of his gafol and services, seems to have been the compound product of survivals from three separate ancient conditions, gradually, during Roman provincial rule and under the influence of barbarian conquest, confused and blended into one, viz. those of the slave on the Roman villa, of the colonus or other semi-servile and mostly barbarian tenants on the Roman villa or public lands, and of the slave of the German tribesman, who to the eyes of Tacitus was so very much like a Roman colonus.

That peculiar form of the open-field system, which was the shell of serfdom both in England and on the Continent, also connects itself in Germany [p410] distinctly with the Romano-German provinces, whilst at the same time conspicuously absent from the less Romanised districts of Northern Germany.

It seems therefore inconceivable that the three-field system and the serfdom of early Anglo-Saxon records can have been an altogether new importation from North Germany, where it did not exist, into Britain, where it probably had long existed under Roman rule.

The Saxon invaders from North Germany hardly brought the three-field system into England.

We have already quoted the strong conclusion of Hanssen that the Anglo-Saxon invaders and their Frisian Low-German and Jutish companions could not introduce into England a system to which they were not accustomed at home. It must be admitted that the conspicuous absence of the three-field system from the North of Germany does not, however, absolutely dispose of the possibility that the system was imported into England from those districts of Middle Germany reaching from Westphalia to Thuringia, where the system undoubtedly existed. It is at least possible that the invaders of England may have proceeded from thence rather than as commonly supposed, from the regions on the northern coast. But if it be possible that a system of agriculture implying long-continued settlement, and containing within it numerous survivals of Roman elements, could be imported by pirates and the emigrants following in their wake, the possibility itself implies that the immigrants had themselves previously submitted to long-continued Roman influences.

On the whole we may adopt as a more likely theory the further suggestion of Hanssen, that if the three-field system was imported at all into England, [p411] the most likely time for its importation was that same period of Roman occupation during which he considers that it came into use in the Roman provinces of Germany.628

The Romans probably introduced the three-course rotation of crops.

Nor is there anything inconsistent with this suggestion in the irregular lines of the English open fields and their divisions, so different from those produced by the rectangular centuriation of Roman 'Agrimensores.' We must not forget that the open field system in its simpler forms was almost certainly pre-Roman in Britain as elsewhere; so that what the Romans added to transform it into the manorial three-field system probably was rather the three-course rotation of crops, the strengthening of the manorial element on British estates, and the methods of taxation by 'jugation,' than any radical alteration in the land-divisions or in the system of co-operative ploughing.629

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