ant is produced, although it would seem likely
that such grants were not uncommon at one time. But a claim founded on
actual user is by no means unusual. Such a claim may be based (a) on
immemorial usage, i.e. usage for which no commencement later than the
coronation of Richard I. (1189) can be shown, (b) on a presumed modern
grant which has been lost, or (c) (in some cases) on the Prescription
Act 1832. There are special rules applicable to each kind of claim.

A right of common not connected with the manorial system may be, and
usually is, attached to land; it may be measured, like a manorial right,
by levancy and couchancy, or it may be limited to a fixed number of
animals. Rights of the latter character seem to have been not uncommon
in the middle ages. In one of his sermons against inclosure, Bishop
Latimer tells us his father "had walk (i.e. right of common) for 100
sheep." This may have been a right in gross, but was more probably
attached to the "farm of L3 or L4 by year at the uttermost" which his
father held. A right of common appurtenant may be sold separately, and
enjoyed by a purchaser independently of the tenement to which it was
originally appurtenant. It then becomes a right of common in gross.

A right of common in gross is a right enjoyed irrespective of the
ownership or occupancy of any lands. It may exist by express grant, or
by user implying a modern lost grant, or by immemorial usage. It must be
limited to a certain number of cattle, unless the right is claimed by
actual grant. Such rights seldom arise in connexion with commons in the
ordinary sense, but are a frequent incident of regulated or stinted
pastures; the right is then generally known as a cattle-gate or
beast-gate.

There may be rights over a common which exclude the owner of the soil
from all enjoyment of some particular product of the common. Thus a
person, or a class of persons, may be entitled to the whole of the corn,
grass, underwood, or sweepage, (i.e. everything which falls to the sweep
of the scythe) of a tract of land, without possessing any ownership in
the land itself, or in the trees or mines. Such a right is known as a
right of sole vesture.

A more limited right of the same character is a right of sole
pasturage--the exclusive right to take everything growing on the land in
question by the mouths of cattle, but not in any other way. Either of
these rights may exist throughout the whole year, or during part only. A
righ