It is a popular notion that the lord of the manor is entitled to the waste, but this is by no means the case in every manor. In the neighbouring manor of Abbot’s Kensington, we find that “the commons” were “presented” with “Notting-hill, the waste by the highways, and the Gravel Pits,” as lately as 1672; {54a} and in the ancient manors of Tybourn and Lilestone, there was pasture for the cattle of the villagers, and the fruits of the wood for their hogs. {54b} The usual proportion given to the lord for his right in the soil is one-sixteenth. {54c} Whether the lords of the Paddington soil were content with this proportion we need not enquire. We know that their demesne lands have extended far beyond their original dimensions; and there is very little doubt that the land of the poor diminished as the lord’s land increased. Other individual holders, too, have carved out for themselves portions of that which was set aside for purely public purposes, but the great delinquents have been the lords of the manors—“those relics of feudal slavery and mediaeval barbarism;” and these before long will be known only in history. It is true that waste land, and a common field existed in Paddington down to a recent date; and it is equally true, that some kind of right over this land was acknowledged to be vested in the inhabitants of this parish; for as we shall presently see, when this right was found to interfere with the designs of the lords and their lessees, a portion of it was bargained for and sold. The common field appears to have existed on each side of the Westbourn, extending, with the poor allotment, from that which is now called the Uxbridge-road to a considerable distance north and east; the portion on the western side the stream being called the Westbourn, or Bayswater, field; the portion on the eastern side, the Town field, corrupted into “Downes?” On the Paddington side, all that remained of the common waste was the Village-green; and for this the villagers must have had the greatest affection. It was _their_ Home-field; on it their forefathers had made merry, and here they had trodden by hereditary right. Yes by hereditary right! And seeing that the title of the noble has descended by law to his feeble son, and the estates of the frugal man to his spendthrift heir; how highly must the people of Paddington appreciate that justice which has preserved to them so magnificent a portion of their ancestors possessions! {55a} Unfortunately for the reputation of the past there are but few places to be found where the rights of the weak have not been most shamefully encroached upon by the strong; and the little village of Paddington affords not the least remarkable example of these glaring defects in the working of “our glorious constitution.”