The claim of the Crown to the foreshore in this case was, however, one that Sir Edward Watkin disputed. He claimed that through an arrangement with a landowner near Shakespeare Cliff, and by certain purchases of land from the Archbishop of Canterbury as head of the Church of England, the tunnel proprietors had come into possession of ancient manorial rights, originally granted by the Crown itself, that permitted them to exploit the foreshore at Shakespeare Cliff as they saw fit, including the right to tunnel under it. Sir Edward had claimed that he was having made an extensive legal search of the title in question, which would take a little while.
But the notification from the Board of Trade was an ominous development for Sir Edward and his scheme; and even more ominous signs were to follow. During March, anti-tunneling forces in Britain circulated a great petition among prominent Englishmen against the scheme, for presentation to Parliament. The petition, recording the conviction of the signatories that a Channel tunnel "would involve this country in military dangers and liabilities from which, as an island, it has hitherto been happily free," was published in the April issue of The Nineteenth Century, and it was signed not only by military people but by many of the most diversely eminent literary, scientific, and ecclesiastical men of the day—including Robert Browning, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Herbert Spencer, Professor T. H. Huxley, Cardinals Newman and Manning, and the Archbishop of York—as well as a great cloud of names from the nobility and the landed gentry. In an eloquent article accompanying the petition, the editor of The Nineteenth Century, James Knowles, implicitly added the name of William Shakespeare to the list of anti-tunnel signatories by invoking the John of Gaunt speech from Richard II:
This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-Paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall