Editing Ashdown Forest (section)

===The Great Ashdown Forest Case===
In 1876-82 a renewed challenge to commoners' rights became known as the ''Great Ashdown Forest Case'', one of the most famous legal disputes of Victorian England.

On 13 October 1877 John Miles was seen on the forest cutting ''litter'' (heather and bracken for livestock bedding and other uses) on behalf of Bernard Hale, his employer and the owner of a local estate, by a keeper, George Edwards. Edwards was a well-known and unpopular local man who was acting as the representative of the Lord of the Manor of Duddleswell, [[Reginald Sackville, 7th Earl De La Warr]], who owned the land on which the forest stood. In a test case,<ref>Short (1997).</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://theweald.org/bk.asp?bookid=srs080998|title=The Weald - Books, directories, magazines and pamphlets|website=Theweald.org|access-date=16 December 2017|archive-date=4 January 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090104130342/http://theweald.org/bk.asp?BookId=srs080998|url-status=dead}}</ref> the Earl challenged the right of Hale to cut litter. Hale, who claimed ownership of his estate made him a commoner of the forest, argued that he was entitled to send his men onto the forest to cut and remove bracken, fern, heather and other plants. The Earl maintained that the commoners' rights of pasturage and herbage granted under the 1693 decree only entitled them to graze their animals on the commons.<ref name="auto"/> At the end of a protracted and complicated legal case, the court ruled against the commoners, who included some of the wealthiest landowners in Sussex. They appealed, and their appeal was upheld in 1881, but only on one ground, that it had been a long-standing practice for commoners to cut and take away litter from the forest, and they were therefore entitled to continue to do so under the [[Prescription Act 1832]].

Resolution of the case in favour of the commoners led directly to today's framework of forest governance, with the passing of the first Ashdown Forest Act in 1885 and the establishment of a board of conservators for the forest.