146 EPPING FOREST. 
Courts. The Commission therefore withheld their 
report pending the decision in the Rolls Court. 
Finally, on the 24th of July, 1874, exactly three 
years from the commencement of the suit, after a most 
protracted inquiry into the history of the Forest, and 
of the several Manors within it, and into the rights 
of the Commoners, involving a stupendous amount 
of evidence, the Master of the Rolls, Sir George Jessel, 
gave judgment. The arguments occupied twenty-three 
days, and the ablest men of the Bar were engaged on 
either side; but on the conclusion of the Defendants’ case, 
Sir George Jessel, without calling upon the Corporation 
to reply, or taking time for consideration, and speaking 
without a note, summed up the case in a masterly 
manner,* and, in a most elaborate judgment, affirmed 
the case of the Corporation on all its main points of 
contention, and granted an injunction against the 
Lords of Manors, prohibiting them from inclosing in 
the future, and requiring them to remove all the fences 
erected within twenty years before the commencement 
of the suit. 
The Lords of Manors had contended for two main 
* Sir George Jessel, when at the Bar, had held a brief for some 
of the Defendants in the early stages of the proceedings, and had 
argued their case on the demurrer. But at the request of all the 
parties to the suit, he agreed to hear it. In the course of the trial 
he said: “I objected to hear this case because I lad a prejudice 
against the Plaintiffs’ case, and I told them so in Chambers. I had 
been Counsel for the Defendants, not on the merits. In the first 
instance I declined to hear it on that ground; but it was very 
much pressed upon me, and I was told that it could not be heard 
at all unless I consented, and therefore I reluctantly consented.” 
