But by various intervening circumstances—joint letters got up by the tunnel promoters to the Prime Minister and to the Board of Trade protesting hard treatment, and so on—the Board of Trade found itself brooking delays all through the month of June. On June 26, the Board of Trade wrote in stern fashion to Sir Edward that the demands of the Board of Trade to inspect the tunnel workings "have been repeatedly formulated and persistently evaded on behalf of the Submarine Continental Railway Company," and that the only way the company could avoid legal action by the Crown was "to consent _at once_ to the proposed inspection." There was no satisfactory reply from the tunnel proprietors, and on July 5 the Board of Trade, after due notification to the Submarine Continental Railway Company, obtained an order from Mr. Justice Kay, in the High Court of Justice, restraining the tunnel promoters and their employees from "further working or excavating, or taking or interfering with any chalk, soil, or other substance" in the Channel tunnel without the consent of the Board of Trade, and ordering them to give the department access to the tunnel to inspect the workings. In the course of these judicial proceedings, a number of affidavits presented to Mr. Justice Kay by the Government revealed the interesting information that the Board of Trade, finding itself unable to obtain access for its inspectors into the tunnel, for some time past had felt itself obliged to station watchers on top of Shakespeare Cliff and on the sea regularly to spy upon the tunnel workings and to count the number of bucketfuls of soil it maintained had been removed from the workings. And, according to all its calculations, the Board of Trade had little doubt that the proprietors of the Submarine Continental Railway Company were deliberately and surreptitiously tunneling under the sea below low-water mark, on Crown property, and burrowing into and removing chalk of the realm. Intimation of what was in store for him in the High Court of Justice reached Sir Edward Watkin at the very time that he was showing a party of distinguished people, including Ferdinand de Lesseps, the builder of the Suez Canal, around the tunnel. A glimpse of that interesting visit is contained in a report in the London _Times_: M. de Lesseps, while down in the tunnel and under the sea, proposed the health of the Queen, remarking that the completion of the work was required in the interest of mankind. When all the visitors were again above ground, luncheon was served in a marquee.