164 ASHDOWN FOREST. 



trustees for the children of Colonel Washington. The 

 rent reserved was purely nominal, and we must presume 

 that a considerable sum of money was paid for the lease. 

 There was a covenant by the Duchy for the further and 

 more effectual division and allotment of the Forest 

 among the Commoners and the Grantees. The Trustees, 

 finding themselves unable to make a profit out of the 

 Forest, assigned their interest in the lease to Sir 

 Thomas Williams, a gentleman who was described as a 

 Doctor of Medicine, but who was probably one of the 

 class of speculators in Crown grants of waste lands, with 

 a view to inclosure, a speculation not uncommon in 

 those times. He further secured the reversion of the 

 Forest to hold in fee, at a fee-farm rent of 100 a year. 

 Having effected this, he inclosed 500 acres of the Forest 

 for the benefit apparently of Lord Dorset. Lord Dorset 

 also about this time obtained a grant from the Crown of 

 the fee-farm rent payable by Sir Thomas Williams. 



Sir Thomas Williams then proceeded with his en- 

 deavours to inclose the Forest. Various proposals were 

 made, but the Commoners still objected; and in 1689 Sir 

 Thomas Williams commenced a suit, on behalf of him- 

 self and Lord Dorset, against the Commoners, 144 in 

 number, praying that he might be quieted in the 

 possession of the inclosures he had already made, and 

 protected in further inclosures of the Forest, and that 

 the Defendants, if they proved that they were entitled 

 to any common rights, might have a proportion of the 

 land allotted to them for the exercise of their rights, 

 so that the improvement of the Forest might be 



