Merton and Westminster II., and say that he had left common land enough. It is now held that owners other than lords of manors can enclose under these statutes, but cannot enclose any land over which a right of common is enjoyed for a particular number of beasts, which beasts need not be attached to a tenement. This of course does away with the chief principal of common—land on which those dwelling near can pasture their cattle. Such commonage is "commonage in gross," and is comparatively rare. The lord must leave pasture enough for all, if they exercised their rights, even though they may not do so (this was decided in the great suit of Banstead Commons). The new principle is the reassertion of the old—enclosure must be for the benefit of the neighbourhood. But the extinction of small holdings still goes on almost unnoticed. Mr Slater gives an instance of the enclosure of two villages near Dorchester, without any parliamentary sanction, no longer ago than 1900. "It was brought about, I am told, by the present lord of the two manors, by the refusal of the copyholders, who held by a tenure of lives, to 'relife.' The consequence has been that all the copyholds, except a few cottages, have fallen into the hands of the lord of the manor; all Grimstone has been let to a single farmer, and Stratton divided into three or four farms." In these manors the common field system survived till very late, and so did the manorial system of village government.[1] All the cultivators were copyholders, holding for three lives, and the widow of a holder had the right to continue the holding during her widowhood. The copyholds were "livings," "half-livings," or less. A half-living consisted of four or five "nominal acres" in each of the common fields, with common rights upon the meadow, common fields and common down. A whole living was twice as large. The tenants elected two "viewers" and other officers, and the whole estate was a little picture of the times when landlord and tenant had equally well-defined rights and duties. Now that the tenant is only an agricultural labourer he has no right to anything but a bed in the Union in which to die.
- ↑ For a full and most interesting account of these village communities, probably almost the last survival of the Wessex type, see Slater's "English Peasantry," pp. 19-35.
