ORIGIN OF COMMONS. 7 
them fixity of tenure, with rights of pasturage and 
turbary over the adjoining mountains and moors; and 
the owners of such uncultivated lands would have had ~ 
their ownership qualified by the rights of their 
neighbours, as was the case with Lords of Manors in 
England. 
There has been much discussion of late years as to 
the origin of English Commons. Till lately, the 
views of the feudal lawyers of medizval times were 
generally accepted, equally by antiquarians and _his- 
torians, as by the Courts of Law. It was held that 
these open and uninclosed tracts were the uncultivated 
parts of areas of land, or Manors, granted originally by 
the Sovereign to individual owners, and that the rights 
of common over such wastes, enjoyed by the freehold 
and copyhold tenants of such Manors, had arisen from 
grants by their superior lords, or by custom, later 
recognised by law, in derogation of the lord’s rights. 
Owing, however, to the investigations of Professor 
Nasse, Von Maurer, Sir Henry Maine, and others, 
another theory is now more generally accepted: namely, 
that the common rights now existing are in most 
cases survivals of a system of collective ownership of 
land by the inhabitants of their several districts, the 
prevalence of which in the early stages of communities 
has been traced over the greater part of Europe. 
Under this system there was originally no individual 
ownership of land. It was owned in common by 
village communities. That portion of it only which 
was suitable and necessary for the production of corn 
