CHAPTER III 



THE FOREST IN DANGER 



FOR a while things went well, but in a short 

 time discontent sprang up. In the first place 

 the register, valuable as it is, had rather seriously 

 discounted the rights of the commoners and 

 others as they had imagined them to be, and as, 

 in some cases, they had actually exercised them. 

 Various customs, or alleged customs, were found 

 to be altogether outside the limits of the rights to 

 which, by ancient practice or grant, the commoners 

 were entitled. When all these matters were 

 carefully gone into by three gentlemen learned 

 in the law (one of whom subsequently rose to 

 the position of Lord Chief Justice of England), 

 the various claims of the commoners were con- 

 siderably boiled down, and a great number of 

 persons, who had been exercising rights of 

 common, were found to possess legally no such 

 rights at all. Altogether the register, useful as 

 it was to the genuine owner or exerciser of 

 these rights, was not altogether an unmixed 

 blessing to the whole countryside. 



Worst of all, perhaps, was the discovery that, 



