EPPING FOREST. 155 



and to end at a given instant of time ; that it is limited also in 

 point of space, inasmuch as two portions of the waste Monk's 

 Wood and Loughton Rise are not subject to it; that it is 

 further limited by the obligation to leave uncut all branches 

 within a certain height from the ground, so as to afford cover 

 and browse for the deer, and also to leave the spears or maiden 

 trees ; that persons occupying the positions of Head Keeper of 

 the Forest, Purlieu Keeper, Woodward, and Bailiff of the Manors 

 have attended and watched the operations ; that these operations 

 have never been interfered with in any effectual way ; and that 

 if attempts have been made by foresters or others to restrict it, 

 they have been very few, and have been entirely set at naught. 

 The evidence on these points, stating what the old witnesses say 

 of their own knowledge, and what they must in their boyhood 

 have heard their grandfathers say, must go back for at least 

 100 years. . . . Now it seems to me impossible to say 

 that a well-defined, orderly, methodical, long-continued, recog- 

 nised enjoyment, such as I have described, can have grown up at 

 haphazard. It was calculated to injure both the Crown and 

 the Lord of the Manor, and I cannot doubt that it would have 

 been excluded from Loughton, as it was from Chigwell or 

 Woodford, just over the borders, if it could have been rightfully 

 excluded. ... It must have had some foundation of a formal 

 kind ; and it is the duty of the lawyer to find a legal origin for it, 

 if such can be found. I might quote many authorities to this 

 effect, but I can quote none stronger than the language used by 

 the Master of the Rolls (Sir George Jessel), in the suit which 

 established the right of forestal commonage. He says, ( Where 

 user has been proved of a right for sixty years that is not con- 

 tradicted by anything else, the law presumes a gi-ant. . . 

 1 am not at liberty to guess whether it is probable or improbable 

 that there was such a grant. . . . T understand Lord Mans- 

 field to say he would presume an Act of Parliament. I do not 

 think I am at liberty to guess whether it is probable or improb- 

 able there was a grant/ Iu plain English, this presumption of 

 grants is a legal fiction resorted to for the purposes of justice." 



