128 EPPING FOREST. 
custom or to prescribe for aright of a profitable kind. It 
will be seen, however, that some years later the custom 
received legal recognition, and that the inhabitants 
were compensated for it on the final settlement of the 
Forest. 
Meanwhile, in the suit on their behalf, the claim 
made was that, “by ancient charter from the Crown, 
the right was granted to the labouring and poor people 
inhabiting the parish to lop or cut boughs and branches, 
above seven feet from the ground, for the proper use 
and consumption of themselves, and for sale, for their 
own relief, to all or any of the inhabitants for their 
consumption within the parish as fuel; that the charter 
which was formerly among the records of the Forest 
Court, called the Verderers’ Court, had, together with 
other records, been long since lost or improperly dis- 
posed of; but that there were divers documents and 
entries in the Court rolls relating to the Manor, 
referring to and containing evidence of the charter.” 
To this the defendant made a preliminary legal 
objection, or demurrer, on the grounds that the inhabit- 
ants of a parish are too vague a class of persons to 
claim such a right by prescription, and that the right 
itself could not exist at law, being a claim to take 
profits in another man’s land. 
These objections were argued for three days in the 
Rolls Court before Lord Romilly, who, in his judgment, 
overruled the demurrer. In doing so he said— 
“A passage has been cited from Shepherd’s “ Touchstone ”’ to 
the effect that a grant cannot be made to the inhabitants of a 
