ENGLISH COMMONS AND FORESTS. 
65 
All in a Garden Fair, it formed the last remnant of the great 
Forest of Waltham. Flainaultwas disafforested in the year 1851, 
and Epping Forest was in a fair way of sharing its fate when Mr. 
Maitland, rector of the parish and lord of the manor of Loughton, 
inclosed 1,300 acres at one swoop. Hostilities commenced with 
the imprisonment of a labouring man named Willingale, and the 
death of his son in prison, from cold caught therein. The only 
offence for which they were consigned to gaol was that of fol- 
lowing the time-honoured custom of lopping the trees for fire- 
wood, nothing daunted by the fact of the inclosure. On his 
release from prison Willingale was induced to sue the lord of the 
manor, funds being provided him for the purpose. Lord Romilly 
overruled the preliminary objection of the defendant, thus approv- 
ing the legality of the custom of lopping the trees. Though Wil- 
lingale never lived to see his suit come on for hearing, his action 
paved the way for the great suit against the encroachments of 
the lords of the manors. In this the Corporation of the City of 
London was persuaded to act as plaintiff in respect of property 
which they fortunately held at Little Ilford, in Wanstead Manor, 
one of the nineteen manors of which the forest was made up. 
The suit was practically conducted against the defendants by 
Mr. (now Sir) Robert Hunter, on behalf of the city solicitor, 
owing to his having been employed in all the great common 
cases that had been brought to a successful issue. The lords 
of the manors hoped to be able to prove that the commoners of 
each manor were confined to it alone, and had no rights over the 
whole forest, or over the wastes of other manors. In this way 
each lord of the manor would have been able to buy up the rights 
of his own commoners, and thus piecemeal inclosure would have 
been effected with little difficulty. But the researches of i\Ir. 
Hunter brought to light the fact that the forest was but one great 
waste, over which the commoners of every one of the nineteen 
manors comprising it had the right of turning out their cattle, 
without being forced to confine them to particular districts. 
The suit extended over three years, and at the end of that time, 
in 1874, Sir George Jessel gave judgment in favour of the plain- 
tiff on every point, the result being that the lords of the manor 
were forced to disgorge 3,000 acres — an area equal in size to that 
to which the forest had already been reduced — in other words, the 
forest was enlarged so as to consist of 6,000 acres. 
A Royal Commission was appointed to report on Epping 
Forest at the same time as the trial was being carried on, but 
like too many other Royal Commissions, it temporised. The 
cause of the commoners would have fared badly in Parliament, 
too, had it not been for the valiant efforts of Mr. Henry Fawcett, 
Mr. Cowper-Temple, and Mr. Shaw-Lefevre ; but in 1878 a Bill 
was finally passed, vesting the City Corporation, who had already 
bought up a considerable number of the interests of the lords of 
manors, with the future control and management of Epping 
Forest. To cut a long story short : — 
