In 1940, Lord Alington died on active service in the RAF, and the Crichel estate passed in trust to his only child, Mary Anna Sturt (then aged 11), who married Commander Toby Marten in 1949.
[dubious – discuss] In 1949, Toby and Mary Marten (daughter of the third Lord Alington), the then owners of the Crichel estate, began a campaign for the government's promise to be kept, by a return sale of the land.
[3] In 1954, the minister responsible, Sir Thomas Dugdale, announced that Marten could buy the Crichel estate part of the land back,[4] and told the House of Commons he was resigning.
[7] A fictional version of the affair was used in an episode of Foyle's War broadcast on ITV on 7 April 2013, which examined the conflict between "the greater good of the State" and natural justice as it affects government and the security services.
Whilst the underlying case was, in the scale of things, trivial, involving the transfer of some seven hundred acres of mediocre agricultural land in Dorset, the ramifications for subsequent government procedure have been enormous, and it is regarded as one of the key events leading to the creation of the post of Ombudsman.