[629] Mr. Coote has adduced apparently clear evidence of centuriation in many parts of England; but we have already seen that only the land actually assigned to the soldiers of a _colonia_ was centuriated. There would seem to be no reason to suppose that they disturbed the generally existing open fields still cultivated by the conquered population. [p412] CHAPTER XI. _RESULT OF THE EVIDENCE._ I. THE METHOD OF THE ENGLISH SETTLEMENTS. It may perhaps now be possible to sum up the evidence, without pretending to more certainty in the conclusion than the condition of the question warrants. «The tribal system in Wales and Germany.» At the two extreme limits of our subject we have found, on one side, the tribal system of Wales and Ireland, and, on the other side, the German tribal system. In the earliest stage of these systems they were seemingly alike, both in the nomadic habits of the tribes, and the shifting about of the households in a tribe from one homestead to another. Sir John Davis describes this shifting as going on in Ireland in his day, and Cæsar describes it as going on in Germany 1,700 years earlier. «Co-aration of the waste on the early open-field system.» In both cases, such agriculture as was a necessity even to pastoral tribes was carried on under the open-field system in its simplest form--the ploughing up of new ground each season, which then went back into grass. The Welsh triads speak of it as a [p413] _co-aration_ of portions of _the waste_. Tacitus describes it in the words, 'Arva per annos mutant, et superest ager.' In neither case, therefore, is there _the three-field system_, which implies fixed arable fields ploughed again and again in rotation. «The three-field system implies fixed settlements and rotation of crops, which came probably with Roman rule. The yard-land or hub implies servile tenants.» The three-field system evidently implies the surrender of the tribal shifting and the submission to fixed settlement. Further, as wherever we can examine the three-field system we find the mass of the holdings to have been fixed bundles, called _yard-lands_ or _huben_--bundles retaining the same contents from generation to generation--it seems to follow either that the tribal division of holdings among heirs, which was the mark of free holdings, had ceased, _or_ that the three-field system was from the first the shell of a community in serfdom. The geographical distribution of the three-field system--mainly within the old Roman provinces and in the Suevic districts along their borders--makes it almost certain that, in Germany, _Roman rule_ was the influence which enforced the settlement, and introduced, with other improvements in agriculture, such as the vine culture, a fixed rotation of crops.