[123] Contemporary Life of Edward the Confessor in the Harleian MSS., pp. 980, 985. [124] _Memorials of Westminster Abbey_, p. 15. [125] See Ellis's _Introduction_, vol. ii. p. 514. [126] Ellis, ii. p. 511. [127] _Id._ [128] _Ibid._ p. 514. [129] The arable acreage in these counties in 1879 was about twelve million acres. [p105] CHAPTER IV. _THE OPEN FIELD SYSTEM TRACED IN SAXON TIMES--THE SCATTERING OF THE STRIPS ORIGINATED IN THE METHODS OF CO-ARATION._ I. THE VILLAGE FIELDS UNDER SAXON RULE WERE OPEN FIELDS. «Traces of the open field in Saxon times.» We have learned from a long line of evidence, leading backwards to the date of the Domesday Survey, that the community in villenage fitted into the open field system as a snail fits into a shell. Let us now, following the same method, and beginning again with the shell, inquire whether its distinctive features can be traced on English fields in early Saxon times from the date of the Domesday Survey, and of Edward the Confessor, backwards. And first it will be convenient to find out whether traces can be found of the 'strips,' and the 'furlongs,' 'headlands,' 'linches,' 'gored acres,' 'butts,' and odds and ends of 'no-man's-land,' the remains of which are still to be seen wherever the open fields are unenclosed. It will be remembered that the strips upon examination were found to be _acres_ laid out for ploughing [p106] on the open fields. They were, in fact, the original actual divisions, from the general dimensions of which the statute acre, with its four roods, was derived. «In the Saxon translation of the Gospels.» Bearing this in mind, the Anglo-Saxon translation of the Gospels may be quoted in proof that the fields round a Saxon village were open fields, and generally divided into acre strips in the tenth century, just as the vision of _Piers Plowman_ was quoted in proof that it was so in the fourteenth century. The Saxon translator of the story of the disciples walking through the corn-fields describes them as walking over the '_æceras_.' Obviously the translator's notion of the corn-fields round a village was that of the open fields of his own country. They were divided into 'acres,' and he who walked over them walked over the 'acres.' «In Saxon charters.» But by far the best evidence occurs in the multitudes of charters, from the eighth century downwards, so many of which are contained in the cartularies of the various abbeys, and more than 1,300 of which are collected in Kemble's _Codex Diplomaticus_. These charters are generally in Latin. They most often relate to the grant of a whole manor or estate with the village upon it. And to the charters is generally added in Saxon a description of the boundaries as known to the inhabitants. These descriptions are in precisely the same form as the description of the boundaries on the Hitchin manor rolls as presented by the homage in 1819.[130] «In the boundaries.»