the ſtatute itſelf is a proof of a time when ſuch a cuſtom did not exiſt[1].
2. It muſt have been continued. Any interruption would cauſe a temporary ceaſing: the revival gives it a new beginning, which will be within time of memory, and thereupon the cuſtom will be void. But this muſt be underſtood with regard to an interruption of the right; for an interruption of the poſſeſſion only, for ten or twenty years, will not deſtroy the cuſtom[2]. As if the inhabitants of a pariſh have a cuſtomary right of watering their cattle at a certain pool, the cuſtom is not deſtroyed, though they do not uſe it for ten years; it only becomes more difficult to prove: but if the right be any how diſcontinued for a day, the cuſtom is quite at an end.
3. It muſt have been peaceable, and acquieſced in; not ſubject to contention and diſpute[3]. For as cuſtoms owe their original to common conſent, their being immemorially diſputed either at law or otherwiſe is a proof that ſuch conſent was wanting.
4. Customs muſt be reaſonable[4]; or rather, taken negatively, they muſt not be unreaſonable. Which is not always, as ſir Edward Coke ſays[5], to be underſtood of every unlearned man’s reaſon, but of artificial and legal reaſon, warranted by authority of law. Upon which account a cuſtom may be good, though the particular reaſon of it cannot be aſſigned; for it ſufficeth, if no good legal reaſon can be aſſigned againſt it. Thus a cuſtom in a pariſh, that no man ſhall put his beaſts into the common till the third of October, would be good; and yet it would be hard to ſhew the reaſon why that day in particular is fixed upon, rather than the day before or after. But a cuſtom, that no cattle ſhall be put in till the lord of the manor has firſt put in his, is unreaſonable, and therefore bad: for peradventure the lord will never put in his; and then the tenants will loſe all their profits[6].
