168 THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
"saved the Forest," and they have not scrupled to accept pecu-
niary acknowledgments from sympathetic auditors imperfectly
acquainted with the real facts. In 1913 a considerable fund was
got together, of which these two, it is alleged, reaped the benefit.
So far as I can discover, however, the only active part which
Thomas (junior) took in "saving the Forest" was to be sum-
moned to Waltham Abbey petty sessions, where, on January
22nd, 1867, he was fined 10s., with 10s. 6d. costs, for trespassing
for conies : and his brother William, at a later date, acted as
guide when, in January 1878, Mr. George Burney, of Millwall,
brought down a large body of workmen to remove the Forest
fences, after the judgment of the Master of the Rolls in November
1874 had declared the enclosures to be illegal.
When, in January 1925, Thomas Willingale (junior) died,
at the age of nearly 82 years, a local newspaper, the West Essex
Gazette (31st January 1925), repeated the old assertion that
the deceased was one of the three Willingales who had been
sentenced by the Epping Justices to two months' imprisonment
for lopping wood in the early sixties ; and a proposal was set
on foot by some well-meaning but ill-informed local residents
in Loughton, to erect some sort of memorial to him in the Lopping
Hall there. Happily this faux pas was checked in time.
We see, then, that with the passage of the years an often
unmerited halo has crowned the several male members of the
Willingale family, and what was but a reflected glory has been
appropriated to and by each individual as his of right. It is
with the intention of sifting the chaff from the wheat and of
giving honour where alone honour is due, that the above account
of the real facts has been given.
In conclusion, I would remind my hearers that our Club
possesses two direct relics of the Willingale family in its Forest
Museum, namely, a lopper's axe, which was presented to that
museum by John Willingale, and a billhook, formerly belonging
to Samuel Willingale, both of which tools were employed in
lopping trees on the Forest in the old days before the lopping
rights were extinguished. These interesting and now historic
relics were secured for the Club by the kindness of Mr. Ernest
Linder, to whom also we are indebted for destroying the myths
which have grown up around the Willingale family, and to