60 BERKHAMSTED COMMON. 



under the impression that the grass drive would simply 

 be added to the Common, and were not informed that it 

 was the intention to inclose the whole waste and shut 

 out the public. Soon after this, ditches and banks were 

 made across the drive. -A little later, gravel-pits were 

 dug with the object of diverting or stopping another 

 grass drive over the Common, called Broad Green 

 drive j and several small plots of land were at the 

 same time inclosed, with the intention of asserting a 

 paramount right on the part of the Lord of the Manor 

 to treat the Common as his absolute property. 



Lord Brownlow's Trustees then set to work to pur- 

 chase the rights of those Commoners who objected to 

 their proceedings, and thus to reduce the number of 

 those who could legally resist them. Besides the 

 numerous freehold and copyhold tenants of the Manor 

 who claimed the usual rights ,of turning out cattle 

 and sheep on the Common, and of cutting turf and 

 gorse and bracken for litter and thatching, the in- 

 habitants of Berkhamsted had, from time immemorial, 

 claimed and enjoyed the user of cutting fern and gorse, 

 not in virtue of their ownership of land, but as inhabit- 

 ants only. The Trustees appear to have been advised 

 by their lawyers that such an user by mere residents 

 could not be sustained as a legal right, inasmuch as 

 by the legal maxim already referred to, the inhabitants 

 of a district, when not incorporated, are too vague a 

 body to enable them to prescribe for a right of a 

 profitable nature. In order, however, to make some 

 concession to the public opinion of the district, in 



