Again, the new movement bears very little resemblance to the rearrangements introduced by lords of manors, which, from an early date, have gone by the name of enclosing. Such rearrangements have not been few. People have talked about enclosing long before they have begun to lament enclosures. Not to mention the encroachments on the waste evidenced by the Statute of Merton, one finds the word "enclosure" used in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to describe a variety of agreements made between lords whose lands were contiguous, or between lords and their free tenants, by which, instead of the parties concerned using a given area in common as their pasture, each surrenders his right of access to part of it, and obtains in return the right to use another part in severalty. The Abbot of Malmesbury[323] and the men of Niwentone come to an arrangement with Walter of Asselegge and the men of that village, whereby the monastery agrees to follow the customary routine in cultivating the land lying between Niwentone and Asselegge, and not to common on the marsh at Cheggeberge, getting in return exclusive rights of pasture over another marsh, and over the east field of Niwentone. The Abbot and Monastery of St. Peter's[324] of Gloucester make an agreement with Lord Thomas Berkeley whereby the former are "to have and hold in severalty and enclose and approve at their will" certain lands lying in Southfield "so that the said Thomas and his free tenants may not ... claim or demand common, but be excluded from it for ever," and in return covenant that the latter may "enclose and approve their lands in all parts of the summit of the Pike of Coveleigh." Similar arrangements are made between the Abbot of Glastonbury[325] and a neighbouring landowner, between the Abbot of Cerne[326] and Robert of Bloxworth, and between the City of Coventry[327] and the master and brethren of the Trinity Gild of that town.
[323] _Registrum Malmesburiense_, vol. ii. pp. 220-?221: "Quod ... dictus abbas de Malmesburia non debet de cetero colere terram de Niwentone ... nisi antiquitus consueverat coli. Et quod dictus Walterus de Asselegge habebit mariscum suum de Cheggeberge quietum a communia hominum de Niwentone. Dicti vero abbas et conventus Malmesburia habebunt mariscum suum iacentem ex Orientali parte stratæ publicæ quæ vocatur Fos quietum et exceptum a communia hominum de Asselegge. Habebunt etiam ... campum Australem in Niwentone quietum et exceptum a communia hominum de Asselegge. Omnes vero aliæ terræ ad dictas villas pertinentes ... erunt in pastura communi."