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.
The boundary is always described as starting at [p107] some well-known point—perhaps a road or stream—as passing on from it to some other, and so on, from point to point, till the starting-place is reached again. The chance of finding out from these boundaries whether they contained within them open fields lies simply in the possibility that some one or another of the distinctive features of the system may happen to occur at the edge of the estate or township, and so to be mentioned among the links in the chain of objects making up the boundary.
The fact is that this happens very often.