74 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE 



needs of the tenants were by an arbitrary lord estimated 

 at a very low figure. At the same time many proceeded 

 in due legal form. Thomas, Lord Berkeley, about the 

 period of the Act reduced great quantities of ground into en- 

 closures by procuring many releases of common land from 

 freeholders.^ His successor, Lord Maurice, was not so 

 observant of legality. He had a wood wherein many of his 

 tenants and freeholders had right of pasture. He wished to 

 make this into a park, and treated with them for that purpose ; 

 but things not going smoothly, he made the wood into a park 

 without their leave, and then treated with his tenants, most of 

 whom perforce fell in with his highhanded plan ; those who 

 did not ' fell after upon his sonne with suits, to their small 

 comfort and less gaines.' ^ Sometimes the rich made the law 

 aid their covetousness, as did Roger Mortimer the paramour 

 of the 'She Wolf of France'. Some men had common of 

 pasture in King's Norton Wood, Worcestershire, who, when 

 Mortimer enclosed part of their common land with a dike, 

 filled the dike up, for they were deprived of their inheritance. 

 Thereupon Mortimer brought an action of trespass against them 

 ' by means of jurors dwelling far from the said land ', who were 

 put on the panel by his steward, who was also sheriff of the 

 county, and the commoners were convicted and cast in damages 

 of ;^30o, not daring to appear at the time for fear of assault, 

 or even death.^ Neither dared they say a word about the 

 matter till Mortimer was dead, when it is satisfactory to learn 

 that Edward III gave them all their money back save 20 marks. 

 We are told that Lord Maurice Berkeley consolidated much 

 of his demesne lands, throwing together the scattered strips 

 and exchanging those that lay far apart from the manor houses 

 for those that lay near; trying evidently to get the home farms 

 into a ring fence as we should term it.* In this policy he 



^ Smyth, Lives of the Berkeleys^ i. 113. ^ Ibid. i. 141. 



* Cal. Pat. Rolls t 1 33 1, p. 1 27. 



* Lives of the Berkeleys, i. 141. 



