Odger's English Common Law

578 DISTURBANCE OF EASEMENTS, &0.
An exclusive right in gross of common of pasture can be granted to a
corporation, and therefore can be acquired by a corporation by prescription
on proof either of actual enjoyment from time immemorial by the free
burgesses of the corporation, or by receipt of rent or acknowledgment. 1 A
right to kill and carry away wild duck on the foreshore of another is a
profit a prendre and cannot be claimed by custom. 2
In order to succeed in an action for the disturbance or
obstruction of a right of pro/it d prendre in gross, it is
necessary for the plaintiff to establish two things only :
(i.) that such a right is vested in him personally or in a
corporation or other defined class of persons of which he is a
member; and
(ii.) that the defendant has disturbed or obstructed him
in the exercise of his right.
III. Personal Licences.
A licence is merely a permission given by one man to
another to do some act, which but for such permission it
would be unlawful for him to do. Thus, if A. gives to his
friend B. a verbal permission to walk across his land, he does
not grant B. an easement but a mere licence, which renders
B.'s action in walking across A.'s land lawful and not, as it
would otherwise have been, a trespass. A licence is a
personal right and cannot be sold or transferred to any one
else ; it dies with the man to whom it was given. Further,
it binds only the man who gave it : it does not bind his
land.
A personal licence also differs both from an easement and
a profit d prendre in this—that it can as a rule be revoked by
the licensor at his pleasure, unless the licensee has paid
money for it. 3
There are other circumstances in which a
licence cannot be revoked. For example, if a licence under
seal includes a grant, it is not revocable so as to defeat the
grant, e.g., a licence to shoot rabbits and carry away those
killed is not revocable, because it is a grant of the rabbits,
i Johnson v. Barnes (1872), L. R. 7 C. P. 692 ; (1873), L-. R. 8 C. P. 627.
2 Lord Fitzhardinge v. Pwoell, [1908] 2 Ch. 139.
3 Cornish v. Stubbs (1870), L. R. 5 C. P. 334 ; King v. Allen and Sons, [1916]
2 A. 0. 54. It is submitted that the case of Wood v. Lpadbitter (1846,), 13
M. & W. 838, is no longer law.
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