The people dwelt for the most part in little towns, each one of which was a separate commonwealth possessing representative government. The corporations were the chief landholders and watched with the greatest jealousy any increase of individual possession which might trespass upon their rights. The system was one of antiquity and carries our thoughts back to mediæval methods where police, finance, justice, and agriculture were all concentrated in one manorial district. Just as in England in Plantagenet days there were the division of the land into strips, the rights of common pasture, and the tilling on a communal principle, so in the New England of the seventeenth century these systems were employed with partial success. The houses in which the settlers dwelt were for the most part built of wood, and stretched in orderly rows along trim streets. Each homestead was detached, and like the houses of our Teutonic forefathers, "was surrounded with a clearing," which in America was usually allotted to fruit trees. The comfort of the houses was of a very doubtful character, log huts were extremely draughty, so that houses of brick and stone were most coveted, but only obtainable by the rich. Although in Plymouth as early as 1645 glass seems to have been common in the windows, yet the houses were mainly of wood, which was also the case at Newport as late as 1686. Governor Bradstreet six years before this had recorded that Boston had suffered severely by fire and that the houses were therefore to be rebuilt with brick or stone, "yet hardily to be obtained by reason of the inhabitants' poverty."[205] Wooden houses continued to be built, and in fact in a few instances exist to this day. In Boston they were still common in 1750, if we are to believe Captain Francis Goelet. "Boston," he writes, "the Metropolis of North America, Is Accounted The Largest Town upon the Continent, Haveing about Three Thousand Houses in it, about two Thirds them Wooden Framed Clap Boarded, &c."[206]