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 grant. 
I am not at liberty to guess whether it is probable or improbable 
that there was such a grant. . . . J 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.’ In plain English, this presumption of 
grants is a legal fiction resorted to for the purposes of justice.” 
