THE LONGEST LAWSUIT on RECORD

Westport Times, Volume VI, Issue 997, 20 August 1872, Page 3

THE LONGEST LAWSUIT on RECORD

(From the " European Mail.") It may interest readers of the late Tichborne trial to know that the longest lawsuit on record in Kngland is one which existed between the heirs of Sir Th.nm.is Talbot, Viscount Lisle, on the one part, and the heirs of Lord Berkeley on the other, respecting certain possessions not far from Wotton-under-Etlge, in the county of Gloucester. It commenced at the end of the reign of Edward IV., and was depending till the reign of James 1., when a compromise took place, it having fasted above twenty years. A correspondent says:— " I forward to you some particulars respecting the result of the suit. After litigation which had landed over a century, the so-called ' compromise' between the conflicting parties—Viscount Lisle on the ona part, and Lord Berkeley on the other—was simply this: Tired of litigation, Lord Lisle, from his house at Nibley, near Wottou-under-Edge, sent Lord Berkeley a challenge to personal combat, inviting him to bring the whole of his followers to the place of meeting, there to decide the question at issue. Lord Berkeley accepted the challenge, and concluded his written acceptance of it thus: —" I will not bring even the one-half of my followers; a quarter of them will suffice for such a thing as thee." The belligerent lords accordingly met at the foot of the Cotswood Hills, near Nibley. Lord Lisle was killed, and those of his followers who survived ran away. There is a low place in those hills through which the defeated followers fled, which to this day retains the name of the ' Coward's Gap.' See 'Smith's M.S. Lives of the Berkeleys,' ' Fosbroke's History of Gloucestershire,' and 'The Novel of Berkeley Castle,' in the British Museum, which latter contains copies of the original challenge and acceptance of this anything but peaceful compromise of a lengthened lawsuit."