As for Monmouthshire, “The soyle of al Venteland” (Gwent, the country between the Wye and Usk) “is of dark reddish Yerth ful of slaty stones, and other greater of the same colour. The country is also sumwhat mountaynous and well replenished with Woodes, also fertile of Corne; but men there study more to Pastures, the which be wel inclosed” (Vol. V., fol. 5), and “Erchenfeld is full of Enclosures very (fruteful) of Corne and Wood” (fol. 9). Round Shrewsbury there is “ground plentiful of Corne, wood and pasture” (Vol. V., fol. 80), at Whitchurch “meately fruteful sandy ground” (fol. 81), and sandy ground on to Northwich (_ibid._). Nowhere else in these counties is either “enclosure” or “champaine” specified. The evidence as to the existence of a custom of temporary enclosure of the waste, is supplied by Robert Plot’s book on “Staffordshire,” published in 1686: “For the heathy land of this County, it is seldom enclosed; but when they intend it for tillage, which is never for above five years neither, and then it is throwne open to the Commons again” (p. 343). “Their gouty, moorisch, peaty, cold black land, they husbande also much after the same manner as they doe the heathy lands in the Moore Lands” (p. 345). Another passage brings into juxtaposition the more recent enclosures from forest or moor for the sake of tillage, and the ancient arable common fields. “Others again have placed the origin of mildewing in making small inclosures, corn not being so lyable to this evil in the common open fields” (p. 351). It is reasonable to suppose that the custom found in Staffordshire and in Devon and Cornwall also prevailed in other counties, particularly in those along the Welsh border. It is some confirmation that Eden about a hundred years later found a similar custom still surviving in Sutton Coldfield, in Warwickshire, but near the Staffordshire boundary. “The poor here, besides the right of commonage, have this peculiar privilege, that every house-keeper may take in one acre of common, and plough it four years: and the fifth year he must sow it with clover and lay it to the common again; after which he may take another acre, and work it in the like manner. By this method, about 400 acres of common are kept constantly in tillage” (“State of the Poor,” Vol. III., p. 749, written probably in 1795).