SUBDIVISION OF THE FIELDS 47
peasants, or the neglect incident on a holding being vacant for a
time, caused much trouble. Weeds neglected, and ground left to
go to waste, encouraged the broadcast dissemination of harmful,
seeds, and the growth of unwanted vegetation.
Even to get onto the fields was not always easy. Unless a
watchful eye were kept, a path or headway gradually got ploughed
in, or some enclosure was made which separated the field from
the village, save by a roundabout route. Thus we find a chaplain
covenanting to give a right of droveway for ploughs, carts and
beasts over his pasture to the land of Sparkeford.1 Without such
permission there was nothing for it but to trample over the
holdings of others, as was complained of, for instance, at Hales-
owen, and the lord was appealed to for protection. In this, no
doubt, the men of Halesowen were within their rights, but what
of their unfortunate fellow whose holding seems to have been
enisled amid those of his neighbours, and to which he had no way
of entry save by walking across their holdings ?2 Then, again, as
we are told, " much vagueness often resulted from the custom of
scattered possessions: a tenant sometimes found he had, by mis-
take, sown the strip of a neighbour, or had lost one of his own
strips ".3 We might think this impossible but for two facts. First,
the immense number of subdivisions which took place, especially
in the fourteenth century, and secondly, the definite evidence we
have of the difficulty which men found in knowing exactly where
their own strip ended and that of a neighbour began. Often
there was nothing but an imaginary line between them, or at
best a line of hazel twigs such as we still see in Alpine pastures,
dividing one man's share from another's. In such conditions
strips lost or gained in size (not always deliberately), or even
disappeared altogether. The surveyors of the Dean and Chapter
of St Paul's were quite unable in 1222 to trace a holding of
three acres held by one of the tenants according to an earlier
survey and they had to make a new entry:" tres acrae... inveniri
non possunt".4
We cannot say, any more than could the men of 1222, what
happened to the three acres, but we can certainly say that one of
1 Ancient Deeds, in, 13.
2 Hales Rolls, 468. Cf. Wdkefield Rolls, in, 148, where a man expressly
stipulates for "right of ingress and regress for his manure and corn".
* V.C&. Berks, u, 170. * D.S.P. n.