202 BAN STEAD COMMONS. 



It turned out, however, that the interest of the 

 Lord of the Manor in the soil of the Commons, 

 subject to common rights, but with the possibility 

 of inclosure, whatever it might be, had been mortgaged 

 for the sum of 31,000 to two ladies, who were clients 

 of the Messrs. Parker, and who had been, it is to be 

 feared, fraudulently advised hj them to embark their 

 money upon what was, at best, a most shadowy and 

 dangerous security, dependent wholly for its value on 

 the success of the suit. 



These mortgagees now took possession of the 

 Commons under their mortgage deed. They at once en- 

 deavoured to realise an income for their unfortunate in- 

 vestment by excessive cutting of turf and digging of 

 gravel, for sale, and refused to listen to any remon- 

 strances of the Committee of Commoners. They stripped 

 large areas of the Commons of their natural turf, and 

 carted away the soil upon which the value of the land 

 for pasturage depended. The Commoners, therefore, 

 felt it necessary to revive the suit. They made the 

 mortgagees parties to the action, and claimed an order 

 to prevent the reckless destruction of the surface 

 of the Commons to the detriment of their own 

 rights. The point at issue was no longer directly the 

 right of the lord to inclose ; the immediate question was 

 the right to destroy the Commons by stripping them of 

 turf and robbing them of loam. Indirectly this would 

 have involved ultimately the fate of the Commons. 



The new issue altered the onus of proof in the 

 suit, and made the question far more difficult to the 



