Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/604

 596 REVIEWS OF BOOKS October parts of the arable area. Nevertheless, there were no big open fields, whether two or three, the arable area of about 4,700 acres being divided by dikes and roads into thirty-nine ' inliks ' (a term which does not seem to have been noted elsewhere) of all shapes and sizes, their arable acres varying from 3^ to 462. A workman's holding taken at random includes portions of from 1 to 6J acres in seven (or possibly eight) of these inliks, the whole half-oxgang comprising 28 acres, 12 in the original village area and 16 in the fen end. One naturally scrutinizes the document for indications of the method of cultivation in use under these exceptional conditions ; but unluckily it was not the business of terriers to record field systems. There was apparently some co-aration, for not all the workmen had ploughs, but there is nothing to show whether a number of the inliks were fallowed each year, or on the contrary some intensive system of cultivation prevailed such as Dr. Gray detected in the adjoining county of Norfolk. In so complicated an arrangement of fields (which the editor has carefully worked out on her map of the vill) it is difficult to see how fallowing could have been worked. Whether or not high manuring had been resorted to, the Fleet economy resembled that of Norfolk in the length to which the break-up of the original tenements had gone. A few workmen's holdings are still in the hands of the heirs of the late holder, and it is not clear whether they were holding jointly or severally, but the end must have been partition, and a majority of the tenements have passed into the hands of new men with or without ' parcenarii '. If primo- geniture or Borough English had ever been the rule of succession to villein holdings in Fleet it had ceased to be enforced long before 1316. ' Work- land ' was in some cases converted into free tenements (pp. 6, 66). The same disintegration had come to pass in the tenements of the moleland holders, or, as these are elsewhere called, ' villein sokemen ', a class who had somehow or other secured emancipation from the more regular and burdensome ' work ' of the villeins proper, though their original condition is sufficiently evident in their liability to the mercket payment. ' Mole^ land ' could be converted into ' workland ' and vice versa (pp. 19, 20, 24). . In several cases moleland tenements were held by the heirs of A.B. ' et parcenarii sui ', which seems to mark a stage on the way to complete alienation and division. Indeed, but for the services attached to the original holdings of molemen and workmen, which led to the careful lists of them at the beginning of this terrier, all memory of their existence would doubtless have been lost at no distant date. Another feature of the village economy which deserves attention is its salt-making. Many of its ' tenements had a ' hoga [howe] et area ' between the village and the sea, and owed salt dues to the lord of the manor. Miss Neilson has had an exceptionally good subject of its kind, and has made good use of it. Her standard of accuracy is high, but there seems to be a slip on p. Ixviii of the introduction where the week work of the villeins is described as ' three days a week throughout the year, and from the Gules of August to Michaelmas every day in every other week '. If the passage in the text on which this statement is based is correctly printed it should be translated ' three days every other week from Michaelmas to