Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/143

 12S. IX. AUG. 6, 1921.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 1786, after reciting that the poer people of the town of Basingstoke had from time immemorial enjoyed the privilege of glean- ing or leasing in and over the said common fields as soon as the corn had been carried from the same in the time of harvest in every year, which privilege the owners of the said common fields were desirous of continuing to the said poor people under proper regula- tions, provides that the poor people of the town of Basingstoke might from time to time go and glean or lease in the time of harvest in the said common fields, provided th^y did not do so till the. crops should be cleared or carried off, and should not glean for more than six days in a wheat field, nor more than three days where the crop had been any other kind of grain, and it further provided that within the time so allowed for gleaning^no cattle or swine should be turned into the* fields. Whether there was any legal right to glean was in 1766 incidentally referred to in the case of R. v. John Price (4 Burrow, 1927). In this case persons had been gleaning in a barley-field where the grain had not been carried, and a good part of it was lying on the ground and had neither been raked nor cocked, and they took away some of the barley after having been forbidden by the farmer to do so, who then charged them with stealing the barley. Sir Fletcher Norton, who argued the case for the gleaners, strongly insisted on the right of the poor to glean after the corn was carried off the land. Mansfield, C.J., said the charge was stealing the .barley before the crop was carried off, and there did not appear any sort of contest between the farmer and the poor about leasing. His objection and his forbidding were confined to the stealing of it. Yates, J. , said that it would be time enough to deter- mine the right of leasing when it came directly in question. Aston, J., said that the right of leasing was not part of the question then before the Court. It might be exercised by law or custom in a certain degree, but that question might depend on circumstances; and Hewitt, J., stated that the right of leasing did appear in our books, but it must be under proper circum- stances and restrictions. The question again came up in the case of Worlledge v. Manning, decided by the Court of Common Pleas in Easter term (26 George III.). This was an action of trespass for entering on land and taking corn, &c. The def?ndant pleaded in justifi- cation that, after the crop was reaped and carried, he, being a poor necessitous- and indigent person, entered to glean and gather the corn scattered in the field, being the gleanings of the said crop, for the neces- sary support of him, the defendant. The plaintiff demurred, and the Court held that the defence set up was no legal answer to the claim of the plaintiff and gave judgment for him. The defence in this case did not state that the defendant was an inhabitant of the parish in which he gleaned, and there- fore it only decided that a stranger had no right to glean. The point was, however, definitely raised and decided, in 1788, by the Court of Common Pleas in the case of Steel v. Houghton and Wife, reported (1 H. Blackstone's Reports, p. 51). This was an action of. trespass for treading down grass and corn, &c., and carrying away corn, barley, &c., by the wife. It was twice argued before the Court, which, finally decided that No person has at Common Law a right to klean in the harvest field, neither have the poor of the parish legally settled (as such) any such, right. Gould, J., gave a dissenting judgment, relying on the dicta before referred to of Sir Matthew Hale, Gilbert, C.B., Blackstone, J., and Selden, and supporting his opinion, by the Mosaic Law and by the provisions of the Basingstoke Inclosure Act, which' he- considered amounted to a recognition by Parliament of the right to glean. He also- observed that the custom appears to have been known in Germany and France, and refers to Minshew in voce " Glean," and gives it as his opinion that the word " leasing "' was brought from the Germans, and " gleaning n from the Normans. Lord Loughborough, C.J., and the rest of the Court, however, agreed in the decision- above stated. Lord Campbell, in his ' Lives of the Chancellors * (vol. viii., p. 51), says : Perhaps the most stirring case which arose in hia (Lord Loughborough's) time was Steel v. Houghton, where the question was whether the poor of the parish have a legal right to glean in a corn- field, after the reapers, in harvest time ? A benevolent association supported the right agitating for it, and defraying the expenses of the litigation. They had in their favour one of the Judges of the Court, Mr. Justice Gould. . . . A Chief Justice fond of popularity would have gained a great name in the newspapers and with the vulgar, by showing how his Court, when, appealed to, could protect the starving gleaner from a wicked combination of tyrannical squires