THE COMMONS 57
termed—of the vill. No completely satisfactory interpretation of
their early history has yet been formulated; but, whatever may be
the tangled legal theory that lies behind them, we may begin by»
noting that "right of common" was vital to the villager. He
relied on pasture to keep his plough beasts in good condition,
and therefore "common of pasture" was what he most tena-
ciously clung to. This was not an unlimited right, but was con-
trolled by the number of acres he held in the common fields;
and further, only those who had cattle levant e couchant en le
maner could claim even this limited use. And since the whole
object of common was to support and sustain the manorial agri-
cultural routine only those animals thus directly engaged were
" commonable ", viz. horses and oxen for the plough, and sheep
and cows for manuring. Other common rights, apparently of
later date, treated by some writers as "common appurtenant",
allowed the villager to pasture his goats, swine and geese on the
waste, and were extended so as to include those who had no
holding in the common fields, but had only a close or an assart
which they held of the lord.
The gradual assarting of land, as we have seen, meant the
enclosure of pieces of the waste for the individual use of some
one person, and this obviously meant that there was that much
land less for the common use of the vill. Now as long as the
waste was large, and not overcharged <by the number of cattle
put on it, no difficulties or hardship arose. But as soon as the
licences to assart became too numerous, then the tenants found
themselves deprived of " sufficient pasture ", and the lords' actions
had to be restricted. The Statute of Merton (1235) laid it down
that the lord was to leave "sufficient pasture" for his free
tenants according to their holdings. But this was not satisfactory:
it made no attempt to define what was "sufficient pasture"; it
did not touch the question of rights of neighbours to inter-
common, and it only legislated for free men, and therefore left
the main body of villagers unprotected. A second statute
(Westminster II, 1285) rectified this a little: it extended the
privilege of "sufficient pasture " to neighbours who had hitherto
inter-commoned, but did nothing else. There has been much
controversy as to what were the exact implications of these two
statutes, but "the better opinion of our books" suggests that