ment in this direction, although not to be
ignored, was, however, comparatively slight. The important changes
which resulted from the increased size of the holdings were not so
much in the direction of superior management of the land, as in that
of making a selection between the different qualities of land, and
cultivating only the land in comparatively good condition. Tenants
taking up additional land cultivated only a part of their enlarged
holdings. The least productive strips were allowed to become overgrown
with grass. The better strips were kept under crop.

If we are to accept the testimony of Fitzherbert and Tusser, strips of
grass in the common fields, or lea land, as it was called, were a
feature of every open-field township, by the sixteenth century.
According to Fitzherbert, "in euery towneshyppe that standeth in
tillage in the playne countrye, there be ... leyse to tye or tedder
theyr horses and mares vpon."[100] According to Tusser, the process of
laying to grass unproductive land was still going on.

Land arable driuen or worne to the proofe,
and craveth some rest for thy profits behoof,
With otes ye may sowe it the sooner to grasse
more sooner to pasture to bring it to passe.[101]

The later surveys give additional evidence of the extent to which the
new tenantry had restricted the area of cultivation in the old fields
which had once been entirely arable land. The most noteworthy feature
of the survey of East Brandon, Durham (1606), was, according to Gray,

the appearance in certain fields of meadow along-side the arable.
Lowe field was almost transformed by such procedure, for seldom
did the tenants retain any arable there. Instead they had large
parcels of meadow, sometimes as many as twenty acres; nor does
anything indicate that these parcels were enclosed. They seem,
rather to have remained open and to point to a gradual abandonment
of arable tillage. Such an abandonment is more clearly indicated
by another survey of this series, that of Eggleston.... Presumably
the fields had once been largely arable. When, however, the survey
was made, change had begun, though not in the direction of
enclosure, of which there was still little. Conversion to meadow
had proceeded without it: nearly all the parcels of the various
tenants in East field and West field are said to have been meadow;
arable still predominated only in Middle field, an