In 1801, after the Dublin Legislature had been abolished by the Act of Union, a fresh appeal reached the Lord Chancellor. He delightedly entertained it, and for the third time heard a case in which he had been counsel for the appellants. The Irish House of Lords was no more, and, sitting alone, he learnedly decided in favour of the Londoners. Lord Donegall was not only beaten, but condemned in costs, and the traps were saved. Safe though they were, his Patent was still safer, for its validity had never once been called in question in any Court, and the legal struggle was confined to the right to erect the traps in a part of the river to which he laid no claim. Thus ended a thirty years’ litigation. The plaintiff never stirred more. The Londoners, grateful for their escape and for the Act which dispensed with the Great Seal to their Charter, were content to enjoy the tidal fishings with the traps, unmolested. Accepting the view of their trusty Lord Chancellor, that Lord Donegall’s Patent had received confirmation by the Act of Settlement, they silently abandoned their rights in the non-tidal Bann. Taking courage at this, Lord Donegall began to make lettings of the river. He first gave his brother-in-law (and agent), the Reverend Edward May, a lease of the Bann in 1803 for 61 years at £50 a year of the salmon “within the known and accustomed limits of the fishery.” In 1805 this lease was registered publicly, and as no one challenged the letting, the Reverend Edward May assigned it in 1811 for £500 to Sir George Hill, Recorder of Derry, who was also a lessee of the Londoners’ fishery in the tideway. Other persons then consented to pay rent for the river to Lord Donegall, in the belief that the litigation of 1769-1788-1795-1801 had made the Bann his. In 1827 Lord O’Neill accepted from him a lease of the eel-fisheries of the river at £369 a year, paying the enormous fine of £7,384. Thus in the first half of the nineteenth century the Donegall interest formidably entrenched itself behind the Patent. There was, however, no attempt to exclude the public from Lough Neagh until 1873, and it was then only made as a consequence of the litigation as to the Bann. For in 1868 the Londoners woke up to the fact that they were owners of “the entire Bann.” After centuries of torpor they claimed it by ejectment, as if nothing had happened since the reign of James I. While, however, they lay asleep, successive Marquises of Donegall had made themselves masters of the stream. The ejectment was met by numberless defences; and, after some legal sparring, they lost heart. In 1872 the suit ended in a settlement, whereby the “Irish Society” bought up a lease of the non-tidal salmon fishery for £2,250, and covenanted to pay a rent of £80 a year to Lord Donegall. The valuable eel-fishery of the river they left in his hands.