Secondly, this gives a typical instance of the effect of enclosure of _commonable waste_ on the poor. One of the commons enclosed was known as the “Furze Common,” and it supplied the poor of the neighbourhood with their fuel, for _every_ inhabitant had the right of cutting furze on it. After enclosure the Furze Common was allotted to one man, who allowed no trespass on it, and the _owners_ of cottages were awarded allotments of land in consideration of rights which the _cottagers_ had exercised. The lands so allotted became part of ordinary farms, and the poor simply lost their supply of fuel without any compensation whatever. This was done under the sanction, not of an Enclosure Act rushed through Parliament before 1845, but of the Enclosure Commissioners, appointed expressly to prevent any injury to the class least able to guard its own interests, as well as to facilitate enclosure. CHAPTER V. THE ISLE OF AXHOLME. To catch the spirit of the common field system, to see that system no mere historical survival, but developing in harmony with modern needs, one must go to the Isle of Axholme. Starting from Doncaster eastwards, through somewhat devious roads, one descends gradually to a wide belt of reclaimed fen. Between this fen on the west, and the river Trent with more fen on the east, is a ridge of low hills, comprising the four large parishes of Haxey, Epworth, Belton and Owston. These constitute the Isle of Axholme--an island, indeed, up to the time of the great drainage operations of Vermuyden in the reign of James I. It was, no doubt, a very ancient home of fishermen and fowlers, who gradually brought the island itself into cultivation, using the plough as a subsidiary means of subsistence. The strenuous opposition offered by the people of Axholme to the work of the Dutch engineer is well known. Even after they were beaten, and the greatest drainage scheme of the seventeenth century was carried through, the four Axholme parishes retained extensive fens, used as common pastures. When in the eighteenth century the great trade of driving Scotch cattle to the London market, in which Sir Walter Scott’s grandfather was a pioneer, sprang up, the route followed diverged from the great north road in Yorkshire, in order to avoid turnpikes, and the cattle, grazing as they slowly plodded southwards, and fattening on the roadsides, came through Selby, Snaith and the Isle of Axholme. To protect their fields the islanders hedged them along the roadsides, leaving only narrow thoroughfares; then, to make these thoroughfares passable for themselves, they laid down for footpath a stone pavement which still exists for twenty miles. But the old hedges have in many places disappeared, so that the fields lie open to the road; and in particular, the gates which then guarded every entrance to the fields are now generally represented by gaps.