His successor, Lord Maurice, was not so observant of
legality. He had a wood wherein many of his tenants and freeholders
had right of pasture. He wished to make this into a park, and treated
with them for that purpose; but things not going smoothly, he made the
wood into a park without their leave, and then treated with his
tenants, most of whom perforce fell in with his highhanded plan; those
who did not 'fell after upon his sonne with suits, in their small
comfort and less gaines.'[187] Sometimes the rich made the law aid
their covetousness, as did Roger Mortimer the paramour of the 'She
Wolf of France'. Some men had common of pasture in King's Norton Wood,
Worcestershire, who, when Mortimer enclosed part of their common land
with a dike, filled the dike up, for they were deprived of their
inheritance. Thereupon Mortimer brought an action of trespass against
them 'by means of jurors dwelling far from the said land', who were
put on the panel by his steward, who was also sheriff of the county,
and the commoners were convicted and cast in damages of L300, not
daring to appear at the time for fear of assault, or even death.[188]
Neither dared they say a word about the matter till Mortimer was dead,
when it is satisfactory to learn that Edward III gave them all their
money back save 20 marks. We are told that Lord Maurice Berkeley
consolidated much of his demesne lands, throwing together the
scattered strips and exchanging those that lay far apart from the
manor houses for those that lay near; trying evidently to get the home
farms into a ring fence as we should term it.[189] In this policy he
was followed by his successor Thomas the Second, who during his
ownership of the estate from 1281 to 1320, to the great profit of his
tenants and himself, encouraged them to make exchanges, so as to make
their lands lie in convenient parcels instead of scattered strips, by
which he raised the rent of an acre from 4d. and 6d. to 1s. 6d.[190]
There is a deed of enclosure made in the year 1250, preserved, by
which the free men of North Dichton 'appropriated and divided between
them and so kept for ever in fee all that place called Sywyneland,
with the moor,' and they were to have licence to appropriate that
place, which was common pasture (the boundaries of which are given),
'save, however, to the grantor William de Ros and his heirs' common of
pasture in a portion thereof named by bounds, with entry and exit for
beasts after the wheat