TENURE). It had its origin, however, in primitive conditions long antecedent to the development of feudalism. Three or four centuries before the Roman occupation the Celtic inhabitants of Britain had evolved a system of co-operative tribal husbandry on the open-field system. The cultivated, or arable, land oc cupied by the kindred, or tribe, was divided into narrow strips separated by balks of turf. The strips were about a furlong in length and of varying widths. It may be surmised that the length of the strips became more or less standardised at an early date, as the disadvantage of irregular lengths for adjoining strips was obvious. The furlong—clearly "furrow-long"—is generally agreed to have represented the distance which oxen would conveniently plough at a stretch, and the ploughman could keep a fairly straight line. In due course persistent trial and error would result in the general acceptance of the most suitable length which when once adopted would become the standard enforced by tradition. The width of the ordinary strip was, in like manner, gradually fixed at four times the length of an ox-goad, which was 51 yards. Land measurements were no doubt not very exact in those days but the result was eventually to establish the standard size of the strip at approximately 220X22 yd., or in other words an acre.
In the Celtic open-field each free tribesman was allotted five strips. The allocation of the strips was made in accordance with
strict tribal regulations, and the cultivation of the land was car ried out co-operatively. The plough was common property but the oxen appear to have been individually owned.
This system fitted very readily into the manorial organisation introduced by the Normans. The status of the cultivators was changed, but the open-field with its separate acre or half-acre strips and its co-operative methods of husbandry continued. The administration of the manor became in form autocratic and the land was held in servile tenure, but in practice the rules govern ing the allocation of the strips and the cultivation of the land were settled by the tenants. Gradually the rigidity of the manor ial organisation broke down, the relations of lord and tenants were changed and only the forms of feudalism lingered. But the open-field system survived in thousands of parishes until the wholesale enclosures of the end of the i8th and early part of the 19th centuries abolished it generally, although it lingered in iso lated cases until the beginning of the 2oth century. Indeed at least two open-fields—at Laxton in Nottinghamshire and Braun ton in Devon—still existed in 1928. (R. H. R.)