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 
villems 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- 
