The whole tract taken by the king was about the size of the Isle of Wight, a triangle, roughly speaking, lying between Southampton Water on the east and the River Avon on the west, its base being the Solent shore, and its apex running up into Wiltshire at Nomansland. Since then its boundaries have been narrowed, passing a mile or two within Southampton Water, from Cadnam through Dibden Purlieu, touching the Solent at Stone Point and
leaving it again at Pitt’s Deep, cutting the Lymington Road at Passford, and going by Meadend Bridge round by the Avon Valley, along the rampart of high down to Breamore, where it joins the old northern border. It has been further diminished by the grant of manors to private owners and to Beaulieu Abbey, and by encroachments of various sorts.
To the town-dweller forest usually bears the prime signification of trees; he thinks of a forest as a wood of large extent, interrupted possibly by an occasional clearing: to the forester it means a great tract of moorland, holding in its bosom many wooded enclosures, many “lawns”, as he calls the lightly wooded slopes, many long, marshy “bottoms” or valleys dividing the heaths. The dictionary meaning is just open ground reserved for the chase, and the derivation is given as foras: out of doors.
The two prime interests of the forest were “venison and vert”—deer for the chase and wood for the dockyard—and for the due administration of these a Lord Warden was appointed, usually a nobleman, sometimes a royal prince, and under him two Rangers, one for each branch of Forest Law. The fifteen Walks into which the Forest was, and is still, divided were placed under fifteen Keepers, men of position who inhabited the forest lodges—“elegant mansions”, according to Mr. Gilpin. Under them
again were the Groom-keepers, whose duty it was to browse the deer, to harbour a fat buck for the chase, to impound and mark the cattle and ponies, and to present offenders at the Swainmote, whether deer-stealers or encroachers on forest land. They had an old distich for their guidance in the former case:
“Stable stand; dog draw;
Back bear and bloody hand”.
This meant that a man found lurking in a suspicious position, or one with a dog pursuing a stricken deer, one carrying a carcass or with blood on his hands, was liable to be haled before the Swainmote, charged with deer-stealing.
A Woodward, with ten Regarders under him, saw to the planting, cutting, and preservation of the timber, and also assigned wood and peat to those who enjoyed chimney rights. It is interesting to find these rights extended to the forests of northern France by Henry of Lancaster after those victories which caused him to arrogate to himself and his successors the title of “Rex Angliæ et Franciæ”. Some of these wood rights were limited to the dead wood a man could reach with a crooked stick: hence the expression, “by hook or by crook”. A Purveyor was also appointed on behalf of Portsmouth Dockyard to claim the timber needed for His Majesty’s ships.
Besides these officials, six Verderers were chosen by the freeholders and one by the king to sit in the Swainmote and uphold Forest rights.
Now, since it has become the property of the Crown instead of the king—quite a different thing—the administration has been altered and the officials are much fewer: it has been placed under the Department of Woods and Forests, represented by a Deputy Surveyor, but the Verderers still meet six times a year at the King’s House to maintain the rights of the commoners.