The plaintiff’s lease gave him dominion “within the known and accustomed limits of the fisheries as formerly in the tenure of Edward May.” What these limits were was not defined; and that they included Lough Neagh was disputed by the fishermen. To ascertain the extent of “the tenure of Edward May,” an examination of May’s lease was indispensable; but at the trial (which took place in Belfast in 1874) its production was refused. No explanation for withholding it was forthcoming, nor was the mystery which lay behind cleared up for 40 years. Nevertheless, on the strength of the Clotworthy grant and the Donegall Patent of 1660-61, Mr. Justice Lawson directed a verdict for the plaintiff—who, he afterwards ruled, had “as clear a documentary title as ever was submitted to a Court.” The fishermen applied for a new trial, and the Court of Exchequer granted it, largely because of the failure to produce May’s lease. Against this decision the plaintiff appealed, but the Appellate Chamber was equally divided, so in 1878 he took the case to the House of Lords. There the “clear documentary title” produced small impression. For though the Patent from Charles II. granted Lough Neagh to Lord Donegall, the Law Lords agreed that the King’s power to make the grant must be proved in the same way as if he were a private individual. Lord Chancellor Cairns laid down that it would be “a legitimate and necessary subject of inquiry how and from whom, and subject to what conditions or qualifications, this possession or proprietorship was obtained.” Its history, and especially how it became vested in the King, were “of very great importance,” and it was ruled that to make the Crown title perfect there must, generally speaking, be “office found.” The dispensation from the necessity for finding “office,” which the Patent contained, was treated as a nullity, while the withholding of May’s lease provoked adverse criticism. The plaintiff’s appeal was, therefore, unanimously dismissed, and after this defeat he troubled the fishermen no more. The judgment of the House of Lords confirmed with remarkable precision a legal opinion obtained in 1636 by Sir John Coke, Secretary of State to Charles I., as to the title to a Wicklow property which he was about to acquire. This old “opinion” ran:—“The Letters Patent granted of those lands by King James to John Wakeman are clearly void, for that there was never any inquisition taken upon them whereby it could legally appear the King had title to those lands, and the King could not grant that which he had not.” The view of the law in 1636 was a pithy anticipation of that laid down in 1878.