REGULATION OF COMMONS. 825 
and Wallington, and the Lords of no less than seven 
Manors—viz., Mitcham, Ravensbury, Biggin and Tam- 
worth, Vauxhall, Beddington, and Wallington—claimed 
that parts of it were wastes of their Manors. 
There have never been any boundaries between the 
various Manors, so far as the Common was concerned, 
and it had been left, therefore, for a long period of 
time in a most neglected and uncared-for state. Lords 
of Manors had wrought havoc on its surface by gravel- 
digging, and railway companies had done their best to 
destroy it by running lines in several directions over it. 
The Manors, in which the Common is supposed to lie, 
are all recorded in Domesday Book. The Prior of 
Merton, the Prior of St. Mary, Southwark, and the 
Prior of Canterbury acquired some of these Manors in 
very early times, and at the dissolution they were 
granted by Henry VIIT. to Sir Nicholas Carewe and 
other persons. 
This Common has been the subject of dispute, as 
regards the rights of the Commoners, from the earliest 
times to the present day. As long agoas the 24th year of 
Henry IIT, a.p. 1239, an action of trespass, then known 
as an assize of novel disseisin, was brought by the Prior 
of Merton, Lord of the Manor of Biggin and Tamworth, 
against the owners of land in Beddington, because the 
latter had driven off and impounded the Prior’s cattle. 
The jury found that the owners of lands in all the 
parishes, or “ vills,” named above, had intercommoned on 
Mitcham Common as one waste. Later, disputes con- 
stantly arose between the Lords of the different Manors 
