churchwardens in writing first to be set down, be thought of sufficient ability to maintain himself and his family without burdening the town, then the owner and lessee shall, for every month that any such tenant, not being estimated as aforesaid, shall inhabit or dwell in his house, to forfeit unto the use of the poor of the said town, ten shillings.”—“_Item_. That whereas it is before ordered, that the owner and lessee of any house in _Brighthelmston_, in case he admitted any under-tenant, without the consent of the constable and churchwardens, first had in writing, shall forfeit monthly during the abode or inhabiting of any such under-tenant not being approved as aforesaid, _monthly_, ten shillings. Now forasmuch as the said penalties cannot conveniently be levied of such owners as are not resident or abiding within the town, and that the town is more burdened and charged with poor than heretofore it hath been, it is now further ordered, that the penalties for every default contrary to the said order, shall be extended in all points as well against the under-tenants, as against the said lessee or owner.” “The orders for the churchwardens in this town book, being in substance the same with those before transcribed from the former, they need not hero be repeated. “The immemorial existence of the above customs in the town of Brighthelmston, is incontestible even at this day: and though some of them be now obsolete on account of the great changes which the town has experienced during the present century, no part of its existing polity can legally run counter to those ancient customs, except upon sanction of an Act of Parliament, or where the right of exercising them has been evidently given up. The commissioners in 1580, only investigated and affixed publicity and order to those customs: and their subsequent orders to the inhabitants, were no more than what a bench of justices may issue at the present day. The independent style of the ancient fishermen and landmen in the second book, seems to be that of men who were conscious of a prescriptive right of legislation in certain matters within their own parish: and the Saxon constitution, whose equitable and benign spirit still feebly pervades what we now call the British Constitution, granted the same right to every parish all over England.