S2 PLUMS TE AD COMMONS. 



inter se, are entitled to join in attacking- the common enemy in 

 respect of their common right. " 



He repudiated the suggestion that the Plaintiffs had 

 lost their rights by neglecting to claim admission or to 

 pay quit rents. He concluded his judgment by these 

 weighty words : 



"The Defendants must pay the costs of the suit. The 

 litigation has been occasioned by a high-handed assertion of rights 

 on the part of the College, who really seem to have said in effect 

 to those who have been exercising these rights for two hundred 

 years : ' You will be in a difficulty to prove how you have 

 exercised them ; we will put you to that proof by inclosing and 

 taking possession of your property/ I think, therefore, that 

 the whole expense ought to fall upon those who have occasioned 

 it : namely, those who have brought into question rights which 

 have had so loug a duration, and to which I am glad to be able 

 to discover because it is the duty of the Court to discover, if 

 it can a legal origin." * 



It will be observed that this judgment decided 

 several points in advance of those in the Berkhamsted 

 case, and was of the utmost value in subsequent cases. 

 It laid down the following propositions : 



1. That one freehold tenant of a Manor (claiming 

 by prescription on a presumed grant) can sue on behalf 

 of himself and all the other freehold tenants. 



2. Where rights of common have been exercised 

 for many years the Court will endeavour to find a legal 

 origin for them. 



3. Where rights of common have been exercised 



* Warrick r. Queen's College, Oxford, L.R. 10, Eq. 105, 7 Ch., 716. 



