But this is not universal. The Enclosure Commissioners, in their thirty-eighth report (1883), record the application for an Enclosure Act for Hildersham, Cambridgeshire. In this parish the two _manor farms_ had the right of turning their sheep every sixth year on to the stubbles of the other farms. Similarly, I am told by Major Barnard, of Cheltenham, that in the Cambridgeshire parish of Bartlow, where he was born, which was enclosed with Shudy Camps and Castle Camps in 1863, that the right of feeding sheep on the common fields belonged to the lord of the manor only. These Cambridgeshire parishes are close to the borders of Norfolk and Suffolk, and the following passage from Tusser’s “Champion and Several” (date 1573) suggests the same rule as applying to Norfolk and the “champion” (_i.e._, open field) part of Suffolk:-- _In Norfolk behold the despair_ Of tillage, too much to be born, By drovers, from fair to fair, And others, destroying the corn, By custom, and covetous pates By gaps and by opening of gates. What speak I of commoners by With drawing all after a line; So noying the corn as it lie, With cattle, with conies and swine, When thou hast bestowed thy cost Look half of the same to be lost. _The flocks of the lords of the soil_ Do yearly the winter corn wrong, The same in a maner they spoil With feeding so low and so long, And therefore that champion field Doth seldom good winter corn yield. If it be urged that the two italicised lines are not necessarily to be read together, in view of the other topics touched on in the intermediate lines, the argument is not much affected, for Tusser shows no knowledge of any “champion” counties other than Leicestershire, Cambridgeshire, and Norfolk, and elsewhere in the poem he deals with the special evils afflicting the two former counties. I may also refer to the Act, 25 Henry VIII. c. 13, to limit the number of sheep which may be possessed by a single owner, in which occurs the passage:--