Manwood, who wrote towards the end of Elizabeth’s reign, had, long before this, predicted what must happen, and the straits to which the English navy, as we know was the case, would be reduced. In Charles I.’s time the Forests were in a shameful condition. The keepers were in arrears of wages, and paid themselves out of the timber.[54] The consequences soon came. There was nothing left but wind-shaken and decayed trees in the New Forest, quite unfit for building ships.[55] Charles II., however, in 1669, probably influenced by Evelyn’s Silva, which appeared four years before, and had given a great impulse, throughout England, to planting, enclosed three hundred acres as a nursery for young oaks. But the waste and devastation still continued. At last, William III. legislated on the subject, for, to use the words of the Act, “the Forest was in danger of being destroyed;”[56] and power was given to plant six thousand acres. In 1703 came the great hurricane, which Evelyn so deplores, uprooting some four thousand of the best oaks.
Nothing was done towards planting during the reigns of Anne and George I.;[57] and Phillipson’s and Pitt’s plantations in 1755 and 1756 are the next, but they have never thrived, owing to the land not having been drained, and the trees not having been thinned out at the proper time.
In 1789 a Commission was appointed, and revealed a terrible state of things. William’s provisions had not only been set aside, but defied. Cattle were turned out, the furze and heath cut, and the marl dug by those who had no privileges. The Forest was, in fact, robbed under every pretext. The deer, from being overstocked, died in the winter by hundreds from starvation. On every side, too, encroachments were made by those whose business it was to prevent them. The rabbits destroyed the young timber, whilst the old was stolen.[58]
In 1800 there was fresh legislation,[59] but it does not seem to have taken much effect; though, in 1808, a new system of planting upon a definite plan was introduced.
In 1848 another Commission was appointed, and showed that the old abuses still lingered, that depredations were still committed, and encroachments still made.[60] Law was at last restored. A great number of the claims were disallowed, and the rights of the commoners defined. So many head of cattle may now be turned out, by those who have Forest rights, through the year, except during the fence-month, which lasts from the 20th of June to the 20th of July, and the winter-hayning, from the 22nd of November to the 4th of May. Pigs, too, upon a nominal payment, may also be turned out for the mast and acorns during the pannage-month, lasting from September the 25th to the 22nd of November, by those who have a right to common of pannage; whilst any person can, by applying to the woodmen, buy wood for fuel.
Lastly, in 1851, the deer, the cause of so much ill-feeling and crime, were abolished, and the Crown thereby acquired the right of planting 10,000 additional acres.[61] These changes have already effected much good both for the district and the inhabitants. The enclosures are now systematically drained; and the Foresters find, in the works which are being carried forward, regular employment throughout the year.[62] A large nursery has been formed at Rhinefield, and somewhere about 700 acres are annually planted, the young oaks being set between Scotch firs, which serve both as “nurses” to draw them up, and a screen to shelter them from the winds. Experiments, too, are being made to acclimatize several new trees, but it is premature to judge with what success.
Further, I need scarcely add that all sorts of schemes, from the day when Defoe proposed to colonize the district with the Palatine refugees from the Rhine to the present, have been suggested for reclaiming the Forest. None have ever, from the nature of the soil, been found to answer; and the present condition is certainly, for many reasons, the best. The time will some day arrive when, as England becomes more and more overcrowded,—as each heath and common are swallowed up,—the New Forest will be as much a necessity to the country as the parks are now to London. We talk about the duty of reclaiming waste lands, and making corn spring up where none before grew. But it is often as much a duty to leave them alone. Land has higher and nobler offices to perform than to support houses or grow corn—to nourish not so much the body as the mind of man, to gladden the eye with its loveliness, and to brace his soul with that strength which is alone to be gained in the solitude of the moors and the woods.
The Woodcutter’s Track, between Mark Ash and Winding Shoot.