CHAPTER XX

THE FIGHT FOR THE FOREST

The Commons Preservation Society—The saving of Epping Forest—The Queen’s Rights—The Lords of the Manors’ Rights—The People’s Rights.

A society had been founded in 1865, called the Commons Preservation Society, which had for object to defend the public rights in the commons round London. Two years later Fawcett joined their committee and attended their meetings sedulously. One of his first actions was to recommend that the sphere of their operations be extended to the country at large.

[Sidenote: Epping Forest.]

He found them busy in the effort to save Epping Forest, which stretches some ten to thirty miles to the north-east of the city. It is one of the most beautiful forests of England. Old trees stand there that in their youth witnessed the hunting of Saxon kings. Epping Forest was for many centuries a favourite royal hunting-ground. Up to the time of Charles II., kings followed the deer there in person. But after that time the Crown no longer protected the game or looked after the woodlands, and the district became waste land—subject only to certain rather vague rights of the Crown, of the local lords of the manors, and of the commoners.

In the nineteenth century the Crown thought to turn an honest penny out of Epping. It sold its forestal rights over some four thousand acres, about half the area of the forest, to the neighbouring lords of the manors at an average price of £5 an acre. These gentlemen now began gaily to enclose the land. The commoners were few and powerless, and the lords of the manors professed to have compensated them or received their consent, where they did not ignore them altogether. One landowner calmly ploughed up three hundred acres without consent of Crown or commons.

[Sidenote: Prison for tree lopping.]

But though much of the forest was lost in some places, in others it was successfully defended. For four years that part of the forest that is within the Manor of Loughton was saved by the courage and public spirit of a labourer named Willingdale. By immemorial custom the men of that parish had the right of tree-lopping, and on St. Martin’s Eve at midnight they used to meet and go into the forest, cut wood, and drag it to their homes. When the lord of this manor, who was also the rector of the parish, enclosed thirteen hundred acres, Willingdale and his two sons, on the St. Martin’s Eve following, broke through the fencing and lopped and carried away their wood. For this assertion of their rights they were summoned before the local justices and sentenced to two months’ hard labour.

The sentence roused great indignation in East London. The Commons Preservation Society took up the matter, and a fund was raised to fight the case in the law-courts on behalf of Willingdale.

Willingdale himself had a hard time. Unless he continued to live in Loughton he had no right to bring his suit, but he could get no employment there, and was forced to accept a pension from the Commons Preservation Society. Even then he found it difficult to get a lodging in the village. He was more than once offered big bribes of money if he would abandon his suit. One son died in prison, and he himself died in 1870, but his pluck had saved the forest long enough for others to be found to take up the fight.

It was during this litigation that Fawcett became actively interested in the case. He appeared as one of a deputation from the Commons Preservation Society to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and shared in the severe rebuke which that gentleman administered to the deputation.

[Sidenote: Royal Rights made People’s Rights.]

This reception was enough in itself to set Fawcett to work. He proposed to move forthwith an address to the Queen, urging that the Crown rights might be defended, and by this means the forest kept free for the recreation of the people. He felt that a clear statement of a sane and popular principle would force the Liberal party to choose a definite course as champion either of popular rights or private interests.

In his determination to bring the whole matter thus before the public and challenge the Government policy, Fawcett stood quite alone. The best friends of the movement begged him to desist, believing he was inviting defeat, and would thus injure the cause, but he had a firmer belief in the strength of public opinion. It was another proof of that far-sighted independence of judgment which his fellow-workers learned so heartily to respect.

His influence on his friends deepened year by year. His personality is perhaps most felt in the strong impression he made on them. Professor Stewart, also an M.P., tells of Fawcett: ‘He sat at times when we came to tell him things in his easy-chair with his hands holding the elbows of it, his face towards us, his lips a little parted, his whole physiognomy lit up with intelligence and interest, his mind evidently drawing before itself the picture of which we spoke, and the smile that was on his features playing even to his broad brow. Or again, when animated with his own clear mental vision, his whole frame eloquent, he spoke strong, incisive, direct words, looking through my very soul with his empty eyes.’

[Sidenote: A friendly Cabby.]

He very rarely went about alone, but the late Sir Robert Hunter told of once journeying to London with him one evening. ‘When we arrived at Waterloo, Fawcett asked me to put him into a cab, and refused to let me go with him, shouting “Good-bye” merrily as he drove off into the night. Notwithstanding his fearlessness he seemed to me so helpless, this blind giant all alone in a cab in London, utterly at the mercy of the cabman.’ But he had friends among the cabmen too, for once when he turned to pay a cabby his fare, the man utterly refused it with ‘No, Mr. Fawcett, no, sir. You have done too much for the working man.’

When his motion came on in the House, he reviewed the whole question of Epping Forest and showed the value of the Crown rights as a protection of the people’s rights. He stated that the Crown had sold its rights on four thousand acres for £18,603, 16s. 2d., so small an amount as to be negligible to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and a healthful means of enjoyment for the people had been destroyed. Ten times the sum might have been saved by abolishing a sinecure office, such as the Lord Privy Seal. This last a truly Fawcettian fling.

[Sidenote: Deer, yes. Picnickers, no!]

The principal argument which he had to meet now was that ‘the forest rights were relics of feudalism; they were useful to keep up deer for the royal hunting. Now that the Queen did not want to hunt it would be unfair to keep them up for a different purpose.’ A man may not put up a fence to keep out the Queen’s deer, but he may put it up to restrain a picnic party of her subjects. The Queen might not make over her rights to the public, but must resign them to the lords of the manors. Fawcett (taking, I fear, a real and humorous satisfaction in his reply) answered, ‘If a right ceased when the original purpose became obsolete, what would become of the lord of the manor? He had ceased to discharge any duties; should he cease to have any rights?’

Fawcett’s motion was strongly supported. Mr. Gladstone showed a wider appreciation of the significance of the problem than other members of his Government. He conceded that Fawcett had demonstrated that it was the duty of Government to take up the question, and as the champions of the people to secure whatever was practical. He proposed a modification, accepted by Fawcett, and the motion was passed.

This was a great triumph, but entire success was not yet assured. Government endorsed the policy of the Commons Preservation Society. The Prime Minister recognised that Fawcett’s road was the right one to travel, but there were still many enemies who were to be won over to an appreciation of the people’s rights. A compromise was proposed which seemed quite inadequate to the society. But the Government introduced a Bill on the lines of this so-called compromise which would have enclosed nearly all the forest and have left, perhaps, six hundred acres in various scattered plots to be reserved for public use.

[Sidenote: An inept Proposal.]

At once Fawcett gave notice of moving the rejection of this inept document. For this and other technical reasons the Bill was dropped. But even its short life had shown its infirmities to such a degree that Government was too wise to let it reappear.

[Sidenote: High Beach.]

The next year, 1871, the Commons Preservation Society was stirred to immediate action by a new danger. Notice was given that the most beautiful of the ancient trees in Epping, those of High Beach, were to be felled! High Beach was a part of the forest in which there were no Crown rights. The timber belonged to the lords of the manors and the rights of the public seemed difficult to ascertain. The Commons Preservation Society sat in committee, and Fawcett suggested that a motion should be proposed in the House of Commons desiring that measures should be taken for keeping open those parts of the forest which had not been enclosed by consent of the Crown, or by legal authority. This ingenious phrasing, for all its complicated appearance, would have the simple and satisfactory effect of saving Epping Forest until such time as the House of Commons legislated further on the subject. Fawcett suggested that this motion should be brought forward by Mr. Cowper Temple, who, on account of his previous services and his less extreme views, was much better qualified to press the matter than himself. This was like Fawcett, thorough and direct, standing back to give another his place whenever it meant better service.

Government opposed this resolution with all its force, but so strongly had the public feeling been roused that it was defeated by a majority of one hundred and one.

[Sidenote: The Hunting-ground of Kings.]

[Sidenote: Five thousand acres secured for the People.]

Later in the session the Government appointed a Royal Commission. And then the City of London found out that it also had forestal rights, and took the matter into the law-courts. For eleven weary years more the battle went on. It was not till 1882 that Queen Victoria went in person to Epping Forest to hand over five thousand acres of the old hunting-ground of her ancestors to the people of England. But the critical time had been in those first years before the public conscience was roused. And in those years Fawcett’s persistence had made the after-work possible.

By his brave common sense, and lucid justice and eloquence, Fawcett had won this great battle for the people for all time. In his article in the _Fortnightly_, the following November, he says: ‘The few remaining commons are the only places where the people, except by sufferance, can leave the beaten pathway or the frequented high road.’ ‘And yet this Government, so grand in its popular professions, so strong in its hustings denunciations of those who would divorce the people from the soil, used the whole weight of official influence to enclose the few commons that were left.’ ’so anxious were they to pursue this policy of depriving the public and the poor of their commons that night after night the House was kept sitting to two or three o’clock in the morning in order to pass an Enclosure Bill,’ ‘and the Ministry, apparently willing to risk something more than reputation in the cause, were disastrously defeated by those who were anxious to preserve Epping Forest.’

The Ministry had come to stigmatise him as ‘impracticable.’ Yet the course which he obliged them against their will to follow was of vital importance to the country, and it seems as if the ‘impracticable’ Fawcett, the blind Don Quixote, had not tilted in vain at his opponents.