Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2

by George Frisbie Hoar

CAP. LXXIII.
Of the Forests and the Jurisdiction of the Courts
[p 289] of the Forest.
* * * * * * *
And now let us set down the Courts of the
Forests—Within every Forest there are these
Courts
1. The Court of the Attachments or the Woodmote
Court. This is to kept before the
Verderors every forty days throughout the year
—and thereupon it is called the Forty-day
Court—At this Court the Foresters bring in
the Attachments de viridi et venalione [&c &c]
* * * * * * *
2. The Court of regard or Survey of days is
holden every third year [&c &c]
* * * * * * *
3. The Court of Swainmote is to be holden
before the Verderors as judges by the Steward of
the Swainmote thrice in every year [&c]
* * * * * * *
4. ——— The Court of the Justice Seat holden
before the Chief Justice of the Forest —— aptly
called Justice in eire ——— and this Court of
the Justice Seat cannot be kept oftener than
every third year.
* * * * * * *
[319] For the antiquity of such Forests within England
as we have treated of the best and surest argument
therof is that the Forests in England (being in
number 69) except the New Forest in Hampshire
erected by William the Conqueror as a conqueror,
and Hampton Court Forest by Hy 3, by authority
of Parliament, are so ancient as no record or
history doth make any mention of any of their
Erections or beginnings.

Here then we have clear evidence that nearly seven hundred years ago the Verderer's Court was being held at periods of time that bore no relation to any division of the year known to the Normans or Plantagenets, or, before them, to the Saxons, or even, still earlier, to the Romans. We are, therefore, driven back to the period before the Roman invasion in Britain, and when the Forest legislation was, as Caesar found it, in the hands of the Druids. In his brief and vivid account of these people he tells us that they used the Greek alphabet; and as he also says they were very proficient in astronomy, it seems clear that they had their astronomy from the same source as their literature. Their astronomy involved of necessity their notation of time. And the Greeks, in turn, owed their astronomy to the Egyptians, with whom the year was reckoned as of three hundred and sixty days; and this three hundred and sixty-day year gives us the clue to the forty-day period for holding the Forest Courts in Ancient Britain.

We cannot fail to be struck, as we examine the old Forest customs, with the constant use of the number three, as a sacred or "lucky" number, on every possible occasion. We have just seen the role it plays in the Mine Court, with its three presiding officials, its jury of multiples of three (twelve, twenty-four, forty-eight); its holly stick oath sworn by three witnesses. We have notice the Swainmote Court, also requiring three witnesses, held three times a year, and subordinate to the Court of Eyre held once in three years; to which should be added the perambulation of the Forest bounds at the same triennial visit in Eyre, when the king's officers were accompanied by nine foresters in fee (three threes) and twenty-four jurors (eight threes).

To go fully into the role of the number three in British traditions would require a profound study; but it may be useful briefly to note its influence on the Bardic poetry— the Triads, where the subjects are all grouped in threes. Nor was this predilection confined to the Island. We find it affecting the earliest history of Rome itself, with its nine gods ("By the nine gods he swore") and the nine books which the Sibyl destroyed by threes, till the last three were saved. Then we have the evidence in the name nundina* for a market, that the week was originally a cycle not of seven, but of nine days; and our own saying that a given thing is a "nine days wonder" is undoubtedly a survival from the period when the nine days made a week,** for such a phrase expresses a round number or unit of time; not nine separate days.

[Footnotes] * The Romans meant by nundinae periods that were really of eight days; but they made them nine by counting in the one from which they started. So accustomed were they to this method of notation that the priests who had the control of the calendar, upset Julius Caesar's plan for intercalating a day once in four years ("Bissextile") by insisting that the interval intended was three years! Augustus was obliged to rectify this by dropping the overplus day it occasioned. It is this Roman custom of inclusive reckoning which has led to the French calling a week huit jours, and a fortnight, une quinzaine.

** The word week comes from wika (= Norsk vika) to bend or turn. The idea connected with it was no doubt that of the moon's turning from one of its quarters to the next. I can remember when some of the people in "the Island" in Gloucester always made a point of turning any coins they had in their pockets when it was new moon and repeating a sort of invocation to the moon! How or when the nine day week was exchanged by western nations for the seven day one, we do not know; but it is likely that it may have been brought about by the Phoenicians and Jews, who regarded the number seven as the Druids regarded three—as something especially sacred. They had much of the commerce of Southern Europe in their hands, and, therefore, a certain power in controlling the markets, which it would be a convenience to Jews to prevent falling on the sabbath day. The circumstance that the lunar month fitted in with four weeks of seven days no doubt made it easier to effect the change from nundinae. [End of Footnotes]

Shakespeare had been struck with the relationship of the nine day week, alluded to in the proverb, to the more modern one of seven days, as is shown by his very clever juxtaposition of the two in "As You Like It." In Act III., Scene 2, he makes Celia say to Rosalind

"But didst thou hear without wondering how thy name should be hanged and carved upon these trees?"

And Rosalind replies

"I was seven of the nine days out of the wonder before you came"—etc.