Forests were still retained by Kings for their hunting of boars and stags. A master forester maintained them. The boundaries of the Royal Forests were enlarged. They comprised almost one-third of the kingdom. Certain inhabitants thereof supplied the royal foresters with meat and drink and received certain easements and rights of common therein. The forest law reached the extreme of severity and cruelty under Henry I. Punishments given included blinding, emasculation, and execution. Offenders were rarely allowed to substitute a money payment. When fines were imposed they were heavy.
A substantial number of barons and monasteries were heavily in debt to the Jews. The interest rate was 43% (2d. per pound per week). The king taxed the Jews at will.
- The Law -
Henry restored the death penalty (by hanging) for theft and robbery, but maintained William I's punishment of mutilation by blinding and severing of limbs for other offenses, for example, bad money. He decreed in 1108 that false and bad money should be amended, so that he who was caught passing bad denarii should not escape by redeeming himself but should lose his eyes and members. And since denarii were often picked out, bent, broken, and refused, he decreed that no denarius or obol, which he said were to be round, or even a quadrans, if it were whole, should be refused. (Money then reached a higher level of perfection, which was maintained for the next century.)
Counterfeiting law required that "If any one be caught carrying false coin, the reeve shall give the bad money to the King however much there is, and it shall be charged in the render of his farm [payment] as good, and the body of the offender shall be handed over to the King for judgment, and the serjeants who took him shall have his clothes."
The forest law stated that: "he that doth hunt a wild beast and doth make him pant, shall pay 10 shillings: If he be a freeman, then he shall pay double. If he be a bound man, he shall lose his skin." A "verderer" was responsible for enforcing this law, which also stated that: "If anyone does offer force to a Verderer, if he be a freeman, he shall lose his freedom, and all that he hath. And if he be a villein, he shall lose his right hand." Further, "If such an offender does offend so again, he shall lose his life."
A wife's dower is one-third of all her husband's freehold land, unless his endowment of her at their marriage was less than one- third.
Debts to townsmen were recoverable by this law: "If a burgess has a gage Past due rent in a borough was punishable by payment of 10s. as fine. Judicial activity encouraged the recording of royal legislation in writing which both looked to the past and attempted to set down law current in Henry's own day. The "Liberi Quadripartitus" aimed to include all English law of the time. This showed an awareness of the ideal of written law as a statement of judicial principles as well as of the practice of kingship. In this way, concepts of Roman law used by the Normans found their way into English law.