168 ASHDOWN FOREST. 
Sheffield, Lord Henniker, Sir John Shelley, Lord 
Colchester, Sir Spencer Maryon Wilson,* Mr. Freshfield, 
and others. These gentlemen and others formed a Com- 
mittee to resist the aggression, and finally, in 1867, the 
dispute culminated in a suit by Lord De la Warr 
against Mr. Bernard Hale, one of the Commoners, to 
restrain them from cutting heath and brake in the 
Forest for use as litter, and subsequently as manure 
on their farms; and in a cross suit, by Mr. Hale 
and others, on behalf of the Commoners, praying for 
a declaration of their rights, and for an injunction 
against Lord De la Warr to restrain him from inter- 
fering with their rights and inclosmg any part of 
the Forest. The case turned mainly on the right to 
cut litter from the Forest, and in support of this, 
several ancient surveys were relied upon, and evidence 
was given of user in the past by numerous witnesses 
of great age. 
The case came on before Vice-Chancellor Bacon in 
1880, and was argued for the Plaintiff by Sir Henry 
Jackson and Mr. Elton, and for the Defendants, the 
Commoners, by Mr. Joshua Williams, Sir William 
Harcourt, and Mr. (now Sir) R. E. Webster. The 
Vice-Chancellor ultimately decided in favour of Lord 
De la Warr. “At no period of the history of the 
Forest,” he said, ‘is there to be found a trace of 
* It is to be observed that Sir Spencer Maryon Wilson, who was 
so ready to inclose at Hampstead, where he was Lord of the Manor, 
had in his time been a Commoner of Ashdown Forest, and his nephew 
took an active part in preserving it. 
