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 
