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it upon building leases, reserving the rents to himself.
His example was soon followed in other Manors,
and things had reached such a pitch in the year
1871, that 3,000 of the 6,000 acres which the
Committee of 1863 had found to be then remain-
ing, were actually enclosed with fences, and the
commoners and the public alike excluded from them.*
It must not be supposed however that these
unlawful proceedings had been going on without
objection or challenge. An Alderman of the City
of London, the late Mr. Copeland, M.P., fortunately
for the public, resided in one of the Forest
parishes (Walthamstow), and he was also Master
Keeper of Walthamstow Walk, one of the walks
or divisions into which, under the Forest laws, tho
Forest was divided. As early as the year 1842,
which was about the time that serious enclosures
began to be made, both Mr. Alderman Copeland and
Colonel Palmer of Nazing Park, who was, and still
is one of the Verderers of the Forest, protested against
the legality of these enclosures. Indeed Colonel Pal-
mer for 30 years never ceased to employ his pen and
his tongue in protesting against the enclosures. He
circulated addresses to the freeholders of the County ;
he wrote letters to the Ministers of the Crown, and
* It would interrupt the narrative to set it out here, but in the Appendix
will be found an extract from the Report of the Royal Commission of 1850,
giving an authentic account of the collapse of the Forest Courts which
enabled these illegal enclosures to take place.