Ashdown Forest, Malvern Hills, Plumstead, Tooting, Wandsworth,
Coulston, Dartford, and a great many other commons, village greens,
roadside wastes, and other open spaces were saved from enclosure, and
some places were partly opened up again, as a result either of
lawsuits, of parliamentary action, or of voluntary agreements and
purchase.

Perhaps the most conspicuous instance was that of Epping Forest. This
common consisted of an open tract about thirteen miles long and one
mile wide, containing in 1870 about three thousand acres of open
common land. Enclosure was being actively carried on by some nineteen
lords of manors, and some three thousand acres had been enclosed by
rather high-handed means within the preceding twenty years. Among the
various landowners who claimed rights of common upon a part of the
Forest was, however, the City of London, and in 1871 this body began
suit against the various lords of manors under the claim that it
possessed pasture rights, not only in the manor of Ilford, in which
its property of two hundred acres was situated, but, since the
district was a royal forest, over the whole of it. The City asked that
the lords of manors should be prevented from enclosing any more of it,
and required to throw open again what they had enclosed during the
last twenty years. After a long and expensive legal battle and a
concurrent investigation by a committee of Parliament, both extending
over three years, a decision was given in favor of the City of London
and other commoners, and the lords of manors were forced to give back
about three thousand acres. The whole was made permanently into a
public park. The old forest rights of the crown proved to be favorable
to the commoners, and thus obtained at least one tardy justification
to set against their long and dark record in the past.

In 1871, in one of the cases which had been appealed, the Lord
Chancellor laid down a principle indicating a reaction in the judicial
attitude on the subject, when he declared that no enclosure should be
made except when there was a manifest advantage in it; as contrasted
with the policy of enclosing unless there was some strong reason
against it, as had formerly been approved. In 1876 Parliament passed
a law amending the acts of 1801 and 1845, and directing the Enclosure
Commissioners to reverse their rule of action in the same direction.
That is to say, they were not to approve any enclosure unless it could
be shown to be