12 ORIGIN OF COMMONS. 



the waste lands of their Manors, provided it should 

 appear on complaint of the free tenants that there was 

 left a sufficiency of the Common to satisfy their rights, 

 with free access thereto. 



The Statute runs : " As also because many great men in 

 England (who have enfeoffed knights and those who hold of them 

 in free tenure of small tenements in their great Manors) have 

 complained that they cannot make their profit of the residue of 

 their Manors, as of wastes, woods, and pastures, although the same 

 feoffees have sufficient pasture, as much as belongeth to their 

 tenements, it is provided and granted that whenever such feoffees 

 do bring an assize of novel disseisin for their common of pasture, 

 and it is acknowledged before the justices that they have as much 

 pasture as sufficeth for their tenements, and that they have free 

 ingress and egress from their tenement into the pasture, then let 

 them be contented therewith, and they of whom it was complained 

 shall go quit of as much as they have made their profit of their 

 lands, wastes, woods, and pastures. . . . If it be certified by the 

 assize that the plaintiffs have sufficient pasture with ingress and 

 egress, as before is said, let the others make their profit of the 

 residue, and go quit of the assize." 



The measure thus passed was, in fact, the first Inclo- 

 sure Act, but, unlike modern Acts of that kind, it had in 

 view the interests not of the community at large, but of 

 the great landowners. Nevertheless, it threw the onus 

 of proof, whether sufficiency of Common was left for 

 the freehold tenants, on the Lord of the Manor. But it 

 ignored altogether the use of the Commons by the 

 villeins in respect of their holdings of land, or by the 

 inhabitants generally, in respect of the cutting of turf 

 and firewood. It enabled the lord, therefore, to inclose 

 without regard to these people. 



As a large proportion, probably amounting to two- 



