[August, 1672, Decree of the Court.]
Forasmuch as ... every owner's share hath been duly set out ... and yet nevertheless one of the said defendants hath endeavoured to obstruct the said division ... it is therefore now thought fit and so ordered by the Right Honourable Sir Francis Goodriche Knight, Chancellor of the County of Durham and Sadberge, that the Award ... shall stand absolutely confirmed and decreed unless good cause be shown to the contrary at the next sitting at Durham.
2. Advice To the Stewards of Estates [Edward Lawrence, The Duty and Office of a Land Steward, 3rd Ed., 1731, pp. 25, 26, and 39], 1731.
A Steward should not forget to make the best enquiry into the disposition of any of the freeholders within or near any of his Lord's manors to sell their lands, that he may use his best endeavours to purchase them at as reasonable a price, as may be for his Lord's advantage and convenience—especially in such manors, where improvements are to be made by inclosing commons and common-field; which (as every one, who is acquainted with the late improvement in agriculture, must know) is not a little advantageous to the nation in general, as well as highly profitable to the undertaker. If the freeholders cannot all be persuaded to sell, yet at least an agreement for inclosing should be pushed forward by the steward, and a scheme laid, wherein it may appear that an exact and proportional share will be allotted to every proprietor; persuading them first, if possible, to sign a form of agreement, and then to choose commissioners on both sides.
If the Steward be a man of good sense, he will find a necessity for making a use of it all, in rooting out superstition from amongst them, as what is so great a hindrance to all noble improvements? The substance of what is proper for the proprietors to sign before an inclosure is to be made, may be conceived in some such form as followeth.
"Whereas it is found, by long experience, that common or open fields, wherever they are suffered or continued, are great hindrances to a public good, and the honest improvement which every one might make of his own, by diligence and a seasonable charge: and, whereas the common objections hitherto raised against inclosures are founded on mistakes, as if inclosures contributed either to hurt or ruin the poor; whilst it is plain that (when an enclosure is once resolved on) the poor will be employed for many years, in planting and preserving the hedges, and afterwards will be set to work both in the tillage and pasture, wherein they may get an honest livelihood: And whereas all or most of the inconveniences and misfortunes which usually attend the open wastes and common fields have been fatally experienced at——, to the great discouragement of industry and good husbandry in the freeholders, viz., that the poor take their advantage to pilfer, and steal, and trespass; that the corn is subject to be spoiled by cattle, that stray out of the commons and highways adjacent; that the tenants or owners, if they would secure the fruits of their labours to themselves, are obliged either to keep exact time in sowing and reaping or else to be subject to the damage and inconvenience that must attend the lazy practices of those who sow unseasonably, suffering their corn to stand to the beginning of winter, thereby hindering the whole parish from eating the herbage of the common field till the frosts have spoiled the most of it," etc., etc.
To conclude this article upon commons,[334] I would advise all noblemen and gentlemen, whose tenants hold their lands by Copy of Court Roll for three lives, not to let them renew, except they will agree to deliver up their Copy, in order to alter the tenure by converting it to leasehold on lives. This method will put a stop to that unreasonable custom of the widow holding a life by her free-bench, which is a fourth life, not covenanted for in the Copy, but only pretended to by custom; which deprives the lord of an undoubted right of making the best, and doing what he will with his own.
[334] p. 39.
3. Procedure for Enclosure by Private Act, January &c., 1766 [Commons Journals, Vol. XXX, 1765-6, p. 459, etc.], 1766.