This passage in JCB occurs after he discusses the imprisonment (but fairly swift release) of Samuel Sullings in April 1870:

Our first battle began and ended in a police court. But there was a still more formidable battle preparing. Writs were served on two or three persons for damage and trespass in

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asserting their right to the footpath. Evidence of user, as shown by old maps and deaf old men and women over eighty years of age, had to be collected.

After some weeks we arrived at the assizes before the Lord Chief Justice. We had great difficulty in keeping, day after day, thirty-three witnesses together; they would wander all over the town, and the old men would be sitting on doorsteps smoking with a strip of blue ribbon in their hats.

When our case came on there was a good deal of preliminary sparring between counsel. At last they got into the ring.

When the defence came the judge seemed restless; he constantly interrupted our counsel, who was the son of a judge, and shortly after himself became a judge.

I was sitting near him (the counsel), and I could see the blood rising in his neck like mercury in a thermometer, until at last it came to boiling heat.

He pulled himself together and said, "There must be something in my manner exceedingly offensive to your lordship of which I am not conscious, or I should not be interrupted in this way."

"Oh dear no! pray go on."

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And the case, which threatened at the beginning of the defence to be finished in ten minutes, went on for a day and a half, and ended with a verdict for the plaintiffs. The judge told the jury there was no footpath across a common. We appealed and lost. We had a meeting for mutual condolence.