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 auother 
grass drive over the Common, called Broad Green 
drive; 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 
hody 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 
