This gentleman, in conjunction with Mr. Gurney Hoare, and a committee of the influential lease and copy holders, reopened the overtures for the purchase of the Heath, which had so signally fallen through with the late Lord of the Manor (Sir Thomas Wilson), and happily with success. Sir John Maryon Wilson and his son, Mr. Spencer Wilson, agreed to give up all the rights of the Lord of the Manor of Hampstead in the Heath for the sum of £45,000—costs to solicitors, surveyors, etc., not to exceed £2,000. The Lord only reserved certain defined portions for the making new roads, which will not affect the enjoyment of the public. Thus the struggle between the Lord of the Manor and the people of Hampstead—we may say, the people of the Metropolis—came to a final close. The Bill for the Preservation of the Heath passed the Houses of Parliament in the next spring, and the Act by which the ownership of Hampstead Heath was transferred to the Metropolitan Board of Works in trust to maintain it for ever as an unenclosed space for the purpose of health and recreation received the Royal Assent June 29, 1871, a day to be long remembered in the annals of Hampstead. Very general pleasure and gratification was felt on the occasion by all who knew the lovely suburb, and regarded it as a pleasure spot of the Metropolis; and when the fears which the name of the Board of Works evoked, of straight lines, gravel-paths, and frigid plantations, had spent themselves in deprecating any attempt to make it other than itself, a wild heath, disfigured by turf and gravel-digging, scarred in all directions, and naked in parts, but with sufficient recuperative strength, if let alone, to renew its greensward and gorse and heather, and to restore the vigour of trees and undergrowth, a formal taking possession of it, and dedicating it to the use of the public for ever, was resolved on.