350 STATUTE OF MERTON. 
were granted for considerable sums of money, or arrange- 
ments were made by which the lord bimself obtained 
the benefit of the grant, and consequent inclosure. 
In Epping Forest, to quote a striking case, no less 
than 1,883 acres were inclosed under the assumed 
sanction of customs to create copyholds out of the waste ; 
and part of this area was granted to trustees for the 
Lords, and thus passed into the Lords’ hands. At the 
same time the consent of the tenants was reduced to a 
mere form. The homage-jury of tenants attending at the 
Court was selected by the Steward; no public notice of 
any proposal to grant such was given; and in many 
cases the grant became a simple matter of arrangement 
between the grantee and the Steward, confirmed by the 
verdict of two or three copyholders, who had themselves 
obtained land on easy terms by the same means, or 
hoped to do so in the future. 
These facts had long been known to the advisers of 
the Commons Society, and the usage of creating new 
Copyholds, at the expense of Commoners, was looked 
upon as one of the most dangerous weapons of inclosure 
which the Society had to encounter. But it was not 
easy to devise a means to protect Commons from a 
danger to which the general public were hardly alive. 
In 1887, however, a Bill was introduced to bring about 
the speedy enfranchisement of Copyholds and the total 
abolition of the tenure. It occurred to Mr. Robert 
Hunter, who had seen the dangers attending the course 
of the custom, in prosecuting the litigation relating to 
Epping Forest and other Commons, that this Bill 
