Also 7 comonage. [f. COMMON sb. (or v.) + -AGE.]
1. The practice of commoning; right of common; usually ‘common of pasture,’ or the right of pasturing animals on common land.
1610. W. Folkingham, Art of Survey, III. iv. 70. Swannage, Warrenage, Commonage, Piscage, etc.
1642. Fuller, Holy & Prof. St., I. xiii. 100. If proportionable allotments be made to the poore for their commonage.
1792. A. Young, Trav. France, 446. Open fields … shackled with the rights of commonage.
1884. Pall Mall G., 13 Nov., 8/2. Restrictions concerning grazing and turbary on mountains over which they claim commonage.
b. The condition of land held in common, or subject to rights of common.
1808. Chron., in Ann. Reg., 114/1. To enclose more than 20,000 acres of land … at this time in a state of commonage.
1828. Southey, Ess. (1832), II. 250. The custom of such a tenantry is to throw the ground into a sort of commonage.
c. concr. Estate or property held in common; common land, a common.
1771. Goldsm., Hist. Eng., II. 131. He [Wat Tyler] required that … all commonages should be open to the poor as well as the rich.
1866. Reader, 24 Feb., 199/3. The commonages … which never were held by feudal tenure, but were allodial lands.
1885. W. Greswell, in Macm. Mag., Feb., 281/1. Wains drawn by spans of 16 or 20 oxen are outspanned on the village commonage.
d. A body of commoners.
1882. Western Daily Press, 15 May, 3/4. A list of the commonage was drawn up.
2. The estate of the commons, the commonalty.
1649. Selden, Laws Eng., II. xl. (1739), 177. The lowest ebb that ever the Commonage of England indured.
1848. Thackeray, Van. Fair, ix. The whole baronetage, peerage, commonage of England.
