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entitled to one when a tenant dies and leaves a widow. The 
widow, on payment of the heriot (now a fixed money payment of 
410), is entitled to hold all the land which her husband died 
possessed of, so long as she remains his chaste widow and un- 
married ; and the husband cannot, by his will, deprive the widow 
of this her widow right, or “free bench,” as it is technically called, 
if she elects to take it. How this custom arose I cannot say, for 
it is not a usual one in tenures of this nature, though we find it in 
Borough English, a burgage tenure. As you will observe, this is 
very different from the dower which a widow is entitled to out of 
her deceased husband’s freehold, and which you all know, I dare 
say, is only one-third, which is also the proportion a widow gets in 
the Manor of Hawkshead for her “free bench.” Here again, 
then, the ladies will say they are gainers by the feudal laws and 
customs, but they forget the men were villeins, and if they gave 
an inch they took an ell; for what do you think a husband can 
do with his wife’s customary property if he chooses? Well, he has 
nothing else to do but present the certificate of his marriage to the 
steward, pay his fees, and be admitted tenant of his wife’s estate, 
not for life only, but absolutely and completely, so that he can sell, 
mortgage, will, or do what he likes with it. This is a peculiar 
custom, and is not found in the Manor of Hawkshead, and differs 
from that of freehold very much, for, by the latter, a husband 
during the marriage has no right to dispose of his wife’s freeholds 
without her consent, and after her death can only hold them by 
what is called the “courtesy of England,” for his own life, and 
that again only in the event of a child being born alive. 
THE RIGHT OF COMMON. 
In all the manors we find commons or waste lands generally 
unstinted, or, as people are in the habit of saying, unlimited. You 
will often hear a person say that he has, in right of his estate, an 
unlimited right of common on such and such a fell. This is all 
nonsense. His common right is limited by the custom to such a 
number of sheep as his enclosed land will keep during the winter 
months. 
