cultivate a portion of them, or to enclose a park, an Act of Parliament for settling the bounds of the and kill the game on his own manors, he had to forests in general. The boundaries as thus fixed obtain the royal permission, and an official writ include the whole of Wanstead, Leyton, Walthamwas addressed to the Forester on the subject. stow, Woodford, Loughton, Chigwell, Lamborne, Such a writ, on behalf of the Abbey of St. Stapleford Abbots, Waltham Holy Cross, Epping, Edmund's-Bury, was despatched from Oxford and Nazing, and parts of Chingford, Stratford, East to Sir Richard de Montfitchet on the 20th of and West Ham, Little and Great Ilford, Barking, July, 1216. By it he was informed that a charter | Dagenham, Theydon Bois, and Navestock. The had been given to the abbot and monks there extent of the forest was estimated at 60,000 acres, serving God, granting that their woods at Harlow, of which 48,000 were enclosed and private property, Stapleford, and Werketon should be for ever free the remaining 12,000 being unenclosed wastes and from regard, waste, and view of the Foresters and woods. What is called Henhault, or Hainault, Regarders, and that the abbot and monks should Forest is a part of this district. have the use of the same woods at their own will, except always driving forth the game. And on the same day, under another writ to de Montfitchet, free warren was granted for ever to the Bishop of London and his successors in his manor of Clackington, and that of Walton-cum-Thorpe, which is the manor of the Chapter of St. Paul's, London. Also that the said bishop and his successors for ever had full liberty to take stags and hinds, and all sorts of wild animals within the limits of the said manors. The Forester was also commanded to make two deer leaps in his great park at Ongar, as he had right and custom to have. And also about the same time Montfitchet received the following mandate :-'We command you to allow the Abbess of Barking her reasonable estovers* in her wood at Hainault for her firing, her cooking, and her brewing, if she has been ac-years enclosed, and extends in full operation till customed so to do, in the time of our Lord King John our father; also to permit the same abbess to have her dogs to chase hares and foxes within the bailiwick if she was accustomed to have them in the time of our aforesaid father.' The king made numerous gifts of timber and firewood out of the forest, for which writs were issued to the Forester of Essex. For instance, he was ordered to give Rose de Sculiz, a nun of Barking, an oak out of the forest of Essex, to repair her chamber in the said abbey, taken where it would least injure the said forest."

By a charter of King John, dated March 25, in the fifth year of his reign, and confirmed by Edward IV., all that part of the forest which lay to the north of the road from Stortford through Dunmow to Colchester, was ordered to be disafforested. Its extent was further diminished by a perambulation made in 29 Edward I., in pursuance of the Charta de Foresta; but its boundaries were finally determined by an inquisition and perambulation taken in September, 1640, by a commission under the great seal of England, in pursuance of

* This word is derived from the French "estoffer," to supply material for any kind of work.

From the earliest times then, as we have seen, this extensive tract of woodland had been a royal forest-one of those districts quaintly described by Manwood as "a certain territory of woody grounds and fruitful pastures, privileged for wild beasts and fowls of forest chase and warren, to rest and abide there in the safe protection of the king, for his delight and pleasure." "Queen Elizabeth, in one of her visits to the lodge bearing her name, is reported to have granted to the poor of several adjoining parishes the privilege of lopping wood. The custom still exists or did until lately-for the possessors of that privilege to assemble on the eleventh of November in each year, in order to strike an axe into the boughs of the trees at the hour of midnight. This right is also exercised upon parts of the forest which have been for many

the twenty-third of April in the following year." *

The ancient bounds of the forest have been a matter of controversy from time to time, but from the days of the Long Parliament down to the year 1851, as stated above, it consisted of two parts—the Forest of Hainault and Epping Forest, the former comprising the high ground lying to the east of the Roding, and north of the high road to Romford, and the latter lying between the Roding and the Lea, and stretching northward from Stratford to Epping. Hainault Forest, in which the Crown had a more clearly-defined interest than in Epping, possessing not only rights of forest, but the soil of several large woods acquired at the dissolution of monasteries, was disafforested by Act of Parliament in 1851, and was subsequently enclosed.

The enormous tract of land which was settled under the statute of Charles I., in 1640, as the limits of Waltham Forest, doubtless included very extensive private estates, subject to rights of forest and chase; the greater part of the residue had been granted or sold by Henry VIII. and succeeding

* Weldon's Guide to Epping Forest."

sovereigns.
portion of Epping Forest commences at Chingford
Station, and proceeds northward beyond Theydon
Bois to the outskirts of Epping itself. But south
ward from Chingford Station there is a somewhat
broken stretch of forest and waste, reaching down
to Wanstead Flats and the City of London Ceme-
tery at Aldersbrook. To that cemetery London
is largely indebted for the preservation of Epping
Forest as a place of recreation for the people.
Extra-mural interment has thus contributed to
extra-mural enjoyment; for, if this parcel of land
had not been acquired by the Corporation for a
burying-place, they could scarcely have maintained
the right which served to break down the usurpa-
tions of the encroaching "land-grabbers." But on
this subject we shall have more to say hereafter.

In its present form the principal Between the years 1851 and 1863, when the
"Open Spaces Committee" was appointed, rapid
strides had been made by the encroaching fences
in Epping Forest, particularly in the manor of
Loughton, where an enclosure of enormous extent
had startled the public into a watchful attention
from which it never subsequently relapsed. That
enclosure comprised in the whole about 1,300
acres land covered with wood, and situate in the
heart of the wildest and most beautiful tract of the
forest. It was not carried out without some regard
to supposed rights. Having bought the interest
of the Crown, the lord of the manor assumed that
he had only the commoners in his own manor to
deal with. These he compensated by the distribu-
tion among them of between 300 and 400 acres of
the forest, and, having thus obtained their consent,
he put a fence on his own account round the re-
maining 900 or 1,000 acres. The lord of the
manor, however, seems to have forgotten to take
into consideration that keen instinct of resistance
to enclosure which is seldom wanting among the
poor agricultural classes, when their real or pre-
sumed "rights" are being entrenched upon. The
inhabitants of Loughton, high and low, had been
accustomed to get their winter supply of fuel by
lopping the trees in the forest.
practice had been a double benefit, not only
furnishing their own hearths, but giving them con-
stant employment during the winter months in
lopping for their richer neighbours. They asserted
that the right had come down to them from the
time of Elizabeth, and was the right of the in-
habitants at large, and not to be got rid of by
allotments of land to a favoured few.

In Epping Forest an enclosure had never been recommended in the interests of the Crown; but a most complicated system of ownership prevailed. The soil of the open waste belonged to the lords of about seventeen different manors, each owning the part situate within his own bounds. Certain rights of pasturage existed over the whole tract, and certain rights of woodcutting in particular parts; and over all the Crown had the right to preserve deer and to keep the forest in statu quo for the sake of the deer, the ancient rights of vert" and "venison." To these ancient rights the public had, from the time when the forest became of any use for recreation, looked to preserve their playground intact, but their hopes had been somewhat cruelly disappointed. An economic air prevailing at the Treasury and the Office of Woods, it was resolved, soon after the disafforesta tion of Hainault, to sell the Crown rights in Epping to the lord of the manor, and a pitiful sum of about £18,000 was thus realised for the national exchequer. The consequence of this action was not only to remove the safeguard of the Crown's rights, but to give a false impression that the effect of their acquisition by a lord was to enable him to enclose against all comers.

In 1851, when Hainault Forest was disafforested, the area of the open forest was little short of 6,000 acres, but this in 1871 had dwindled to just under 3,000. In 1882, when Epping Forest was handed over by Her Majesty for "the free use and enjoyment of the people for ever," it extended to about 5,600 acres, nearly the whole of which had been purchased by the Corporation of London, while some 400 acres remained enclosed, partly under such conditions as prevented building, thus tending to enhance the value of the forest as an 66 open space."

To the poor this

In the preceding chapter we have spoken of the highwaymen who infested these parts in former times; here we have had to deal with modern thieves and plunderers, in the shape of "land grabbers." Well and wittily wrote Samuel Butler in "Hudibras" :—

"The fault is great in man or woman

Who steals a goose from off a common :
But who shall plead that man's excuse,
Who steals the common from the goose?"

It was all very well for the queen to bestow a baronetcy on the Lord Mayor of London, Alderman Ellis, and the honour of knighthood on the two sheriffs, Mr. Reginald Hanson and Mr. William Anderson Ogg; but the real men who fought and won the battle on behalf of the toiling masses were Mr. John T. Bedford, a common councilman, Mr. George Burney, an old member of the Commons Preservation Society, Mr. Frederick Young, the Chairman, and Mr. W. G. S. Smith, the

Epping Forest.]

THE EPPING FOREST COMMISSION.

429

To character) the Corporation, when they had resolved to help the public, founded a Chancery suit, which, commenced on the 14th of August, 1871, was terminated by the memorable judg-ment of Sir George Jessel, in November, 1874. All the lords of manors were defendants to this suit, and no expense was spared on either side to gain the victory. In the result the case of the Corporation was established at all points, the right they claimed was declared to exist, and all enclosures made within twenty years before the filing of the Bill-that is, since the 14th of August, 1851 -were pronounced illegal.

Honorary Secretary of the "Forest Fund."
these names must be added that of an old forester
named Thomas Willingale, whose rude forefathers
for generations had lived by the irregular products
of that forest. This last-named individual was the
"Village Hampden " who organised the bands who
pulled down the enclosures-an overt act, which
served as a declaration of war. Burney, who was also
a commoner in the forest, took down from London
three omnibus-loads of navvies, and in the course
of a morning's work levelled the fences round
the obnoxious enclosures which the commissioners
wished to legalise.

It was really, if the full truth must be stated, a sort of triangular duel between the Crown, the lords of the manor, and the people. The Crown sold its rights for mere nominal sums, and then the landowners and the landless multitude were the only combatants, and the former thought that they would be able to drive the latter to surrender their rights on their own terms. But they found, when too late, that they had "reckoned without their host." The lords of several of the manors sold their "waste," as the open lands were called by them, and allowed it in every direction to be enclosed and built upon.

In the end, after long litigation, and after several lawless encounters, the question was brought formally under the notice of the House of Commons, and an Act passed appointing a commission to inquire into the contending rights, and to report to Parliament a scheme for the preservation and management of the forest in the interests of the public.

So far, a decisive victory was gained; but still much remained to be done in order to secure its fruits, and to this end the vast resources of the Corporation were devoted. The lords of the manors who had enclosed had sold large tracts of the forest, amounting in all to about 1,000 acres. It was impossible to make all the purchasers parties to the suit, and recourse was of necessity had to the Epping Forest Commission to enforce the judgment against these persons, subject to such modifications as might be found just and expedient. Portions of the land sold had been built over, and it was obviously impossible to pull down streets of villas; but larger portions remained in their natural condition or had been merely broken up for agriculture, and these portions the Corporation and the Commons Preservation Society thought should be restored to the public. Unfortunately, the commissioners took a different view, and thus prolonged the struggle for some years.

On the 23rd February, 1877, the final report of A few days before this Act received the royal the Epping Forest Commissioners was presented to assent, another champion took up the gage on the Parliament. Their recommendations, as summed up part of the public. The Corporation of London briefly by the author of Weldon's "Guide" already had an ancient traditionary connection with the quoted, were: "The forest to be disafforested, the forest. It was reputed that certain rights of hunting Crown rights to cease, the forest to be managed by there had been granted to them by royal charter, the Corporation of London as conservators, who and though the existence of the grant could never are from time to time to appoint a committee, not be established, there were not wanting curious exceeding twelve in number, to act for the conentries in the Corporation records bearing upon servators; and Colonel Palmer, Sir Thomas White, the claim. Fortunately, however, a connection of and Sir Antonio Brady, the surviving verderers, a very different character had recently arisen, and one other verderer to be elected, to be memwhich, though it could not furnish the motive for bers of that committee. In future, two of the interference, supplied a most powerful weapon of verderers to be elected by the parliamentary voters attack. The Commissioners of Sewers had pur- of the northern part of the forest, and two by those chased for the purposes of a cemetery the demesne of the southern. Rights of common, pasture, lands of the ancient manor of Aldersbrook. In lopping, pannage, and so forth, to continue, subject the time of Charles I. the lord of this manor to the scheme. The conservators to keep the claimed for himself and his tenants rights of common of pasture for their beasts throughout the length and breadth of the forest waste. Upon this claim (one of many of a similar

forest unenclosed as an open space for the recreation and enjoyment of the public at all times; they shall preserve its natural aspect, protect the timber and other growths, and prevent the digging