VILLAGE GREENS. 307 
in all directions could be punished, provided they did 
no injury to the property of the Lords of the Manor 
or of the Manorial tenants. The public were at law 
trespassers, but they were dispunishable trespassers. 
They had no right to claim that the Common should 
remain 7” statu quo, or that inclosure should be prevented; 
their continued enjoyment of the Common therefore 
depended on the maintenance by the Commoners of 
their rights over the land. Where a great popu- 
lation has grown up round the Common, people have 
practically taken the place of cattle, but the law, which 
had originally recognised the user of copyholders to 
turn out their cattle on the Common, and had given 
it the sanction of right, has failed to adopt the same 
course with respect to the still more important user by 
people. 
There are not wanting, however, signs that the 
judges are disposed to take a more popular view of the 
rights of the public to recreation, and not to be bound 
too closely by the doctrine of extinction of the local rights 
by the more general user by the public at large. Quite 
recently, in 1892, an important case was tried and 
determined at the Bristol Assizes, in which, though it 
was in the hands of a local solicitor, the advice of the 
Commons Society had been taken as to the right of 
inhabitants to a Common for recreation. 
Tt arose in respect of Walton Common, which lies 
on the edge of the hills stretching along the coast-line 
of the Bristol Channel from Clevedon to Portishead. 
On the level ground at the top of this hill is a well- 
u 2 
