geat agan.
gebete[n] þam oðrum þe hiora dæl getynedne. . . .
Of a Ceorle's grass-tun (meadow).
(42) If ceorls have common meadow or other land divided into strips[134] to fence, and some have fenced their strip, some have not, and . . . [stray cattle (?)] eat their common acres or grass, let those go who own the gap, and compensate the others who have fenced their strip. . . .
There is here in the smallest possible compass the most complete evidence that in the seventh century the fields of Wessex were common open fields, the arable being divided into acres and the meadows into doles[134]; and as the system is incidentally mentioned as a thing existing as a matter of course, it is not likely to have been suddenly or recently introduced. The evidence throws it back, therefore, at least to the earliest period of Saxon rule.
II. THE HOLDINGS WERE COMPOSED OF SCATTERED STRIPS.
The holdings were hides and yard-lands.
Let us next ask whether there are traces of the scattered ownership—the scattering all over the open fields of the strips included in the holdings—which was so essential a characteristic of the system; and, further, whether in tracing it back into early Saxon [p111] times any clue to its original meaning and intention can be found.
First, it may be stated generally that, when the nature and incidents of the holdings are examined hereafter, it will be found that throughout the period of Saxon rule, from the time of Edward the Confessor backward to the date of the laws of King Ine, 300 years earlier, the holdings were mainly the same as those with which we have become familiar, viz. hides, half-hides, and yard-lands, and that, generally speaking, there were no other kinds of holdings the names of which are mentioned.