Law of The Commons
The legal position concerning common land is confused. Most commons are based on ancient rights, that is to say common law (coincidence of term only), which pre-date statute law laid down by parliament. The exact rights which apply to individual commons were in some cases documented but more often were based on long-held traditions. The UK government tried to regularise the definitions of common land with the Commons Registration Act 1965, which established a register of common land. However numerous inconsistencies and irregularities remain.
Prior to the Erection of Cottages Act 1588, an Englishman could build his house on common land, if he could raise the roof over his head and have a fire in the hearth between sunrise and sunset, and claim the dwelling as his home.
Registered commons often abut each other, so what may appear to be a single large common may in fact consist of several commons with no visible boundary between them — these may for example be in different parishes. The commoners will have reciprocal rights over each other's commons.
Read more about this topic: Common Land
Famous quotes containing the words law of, law and/or commons:
“The basis of good manners is self-reliance. Necessity is the law of all who are not self-possessed.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Nor has science sufficient humanity, so long as the naturalist overlooks the wonderful congruity which subsists between man and the world; of which he is lord, not because he is the most subtile inhabitant, but because he is its head and heart, and finds something of himself in every great and small thing, in every mountain stratum, in every new law of color, fact of astronomy, or atmospheric influence which observation or analysis lay open.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“[I]n Great-Britain it is said that their constitution relies on the house of commons for honesty, and the lords for wisdom; which would be a rational reliance if honesty were to be bought with money, and if wisdom were hereditary.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)