oned
agriculture afford clear indications that at one time allotments were
carried out and rules enforced with regard to cultivation and the annual
crops.

The history of many towns shows that they formerly enjoyed rights of
common which they no longer enjoy, and the manner in which these became
lost is in numerous instances a mystery. When, from being lands of which
the tenants were virtually seised for life, they passed through some
evolution into being the property of the corporation let to freemen or
others as the case might be, they might not improbably be sold for the
good of the community at large. In earlier days the right may have been
surrendered by timid or ignorant townspeople under the pressure of a
local lord of the manor strong enough to set the law at defiance, or a
compromise may have been effected between him and those in temporary
enjoyment of the benefit. These, as we have observed, sometimes
consisted of no more than a fraction of the inhabitants, and, as the
population increased, this would be a diminishing fraction, with the
result that outsiders would be apathetic regarding the fate of the
common. Where there was a special qualification, it was not necessarily
seniority. At Huntingdon, for example, it was the freemen dwelling in
"commonable" houses who were privileged to use the common.

There were other restrictions than those already named. In the locality
just mentioned "commonable" burgesses, if we may imitate their manner of
speech, might depasture two cows and one horse from Old May-day till
Martinmas, and four sheep from Martinmas till Candlemas. At Coventry, in
what are called Lammas Lands, the allowance is two horses and one cow.
How very wise and necessary these limitations were may be gleaned from
the following extract from a decree in Chancery in 42 Elizabeth. The
bill--we have modernized the spelling--recites that,

"Divers years past sundry godly and well-disposed persons having
commiseration of the poor estate of the said town and parish, did in
sundry times in divers kings' reigns assure certain lands, tenements,
rents, common of pasture, of profits of markets and fairs and other
annual commodities under divers and sundry persons for the ease and
relief of the same poor inhabitants of the said town and parish, and
namely one William, sometimes Lord of the Town and Borough of Torrington
Magna aforesaid, by his deed did assure unto the free burgesses of the
said town, and some ot