Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/416

 408 COMMUN1TAS VILLAE of centralization in what must have been a series of village meetings for the organization and administration of its agrarian affairs. We can trace in the Estate Book of Henry de Bray the gradual development of a communal sense in Harlestone from the thir- teenth century onwards. The eight men of the village who in 1269 quit-claimed to Henry de Bray's grandfather their right in the common pasture of two crofts, 1 so that in future they would not be able to exact common of pasture there 'ratione com- munitatis nee alicuius alterius iuris ', seem to be acting as a group of individuals rather than as a corporate body. The writing is corroborated with the impression of their several seals, and was made before the justices in eyre at Northampton. There is a note at the end by Henry de Bray that the two crofts had been enclosed for sixty years previously, so we may conclude that the instrument records the settlement before the king's judges of an ancient dispute about encroachment on common rights. In 1309 2 there is a grant to Henry de Bray from the abbot of St. James, Northampton, of the right to enclose two acres of pasture called Brode Bewe every year 3 from the Feast of the Purification to the day after St. Peter in Chains, in exchange for Henry's rights of bull and boar in Harlestone fields. Then there is a convention of the same year 4 between Henry and twenty-six men and two women of Harlestone, separately named, in which they grant him the same rights in return for the same concession. The convention is separately sealed. A further charter of 1311 5 records a grant of the same from Ralph de Bulmer, ' sicud abbas et conventus Norhamptonae de domo Sancti lacobi, Bogerus de Lomeleye ac viginti et octo liberi tenentes de Herleston eidem Henrico per scripta sua sigillis eorum consignata concesserunt '. The abbot, Ralph de Bulmer, and Roger de Lomely had, of course, seignorial rights in the commons. The sense of unity was growing. Henry adds a memorandum in French referring to these transactions, in which he speaks of ' la commune de la ville de Herleston '. 6 But they had not yet arrived at the stage where the decisions of the majority of the commoners would necessarily be accepted as binding by the rest of the village. The rights obtained by Henry from the ' commune de la ville ' were individual rights. Its action in bargaining them away was successfully repudiated twenty-one years later by two individuals who had not been parties to the original agreement. In 1330 John Gosse and his mother were claiming rights of common in these same two acres, and only agreed to surrender them in 1 Estate Book, p. 11. Ibid. p. 12. 9 Henry already had the right to enclose every alternate year. Ibid. p. 13. Ibid. p. 12. 6 Ibid. p. 14