TOLLARD FARNHAM. 223 
case, which has already been dealt with, and it formed a 
main topic of the counsel employed by the Corporation 
of London to resist the claims of the inhabitants of 
Loughton. 
Lord Hobhouse discussed the Tollard Farnham case 
in his judgment, and succeeded in drawing a distinction 
between the facts of that case and those before him. 
“The Judges of the Exchequer,” he said, “ considered that 
the evidence of user was such as to raise a question whether a 
corresponding custom did not exist; but they held there could 
not be such a custom. On the question of prescription they 
gave their general conclusion upon an examination of the 
evidence which they do not give in detail. That conclusion is 
that, the evidence entirely fails to prove the user by the inhabi- 
tants generally, or as inhabitants, such as to justify the pre- 
sumption of a grant by the Crown. . . . On the question 
of incorporation they felt great difficulty. They held that it 
was necessary to enable the inhabitants to take an interest, 
and that they could not presume it in the absence of all evidence 
of corporate acts, and when there was another body legally 
existing—viz. the tenants of the Manor, who are exercising 
unrestricted rights and publicly asserting their entire control 
over the underwood on the Common.” 
It is difficult to grasp the distinction between the 
facts of the two cases. Chief Baron Kelly and Lord 
Hobhouse arrived at different conclusions from the 
facts before them. It appears almost certain that Lord 
Hobhouse, upon the principles he laid down, would 
have felt himself bound to find a legal origin for an 
user on the part of the inhabitants of Tollard Farnham, 
which was clear and definite, and went back to ancient 
times. It is almost as certain that the Barons of 
