(3) Interference with rights of property. Freeholders whose lands lay in districts which the king was successful in afforesting, retained their freeholds, but their proprietary rights lost half their value. They could not root out trees, to clear their own lands for cultivation; for that was to commit an assart. They could not plough up waste land or pasture (even outside the covert) and turn it into arable, nor build a mill, nor take marl or lime from pits, nor make fishponds, nor enclose any space with hedge or paling; for these acts of ownership were purprestures. They could not destroy a tree or lop off branches (except under stringent conditions), without being guilty of waste.[[933]] They could not agist their woods until a fortnight after Michaelmas, when the agisting of the king’s demesnes was over (thus reserving for him the best market and “pannage dues”).[[934]] Heavy tolls were, under the name of “chiminage,” taken from carts and sumpter-horses passing through the woods. In all these and many other ways, rights of private property in forests were so restricted as to become valueless. The Great Charter endeavoured to strike at the abuse of these Crown rights by providing machinery for the abolition of “evil customs.” The Carta de foresta entered more into detail. Not only were past trespasses of all three kinds,—wastes, purprestures, and assarts to be condoned, but the law was altered for the future. The long list of purprestures was materially curtailed: it was made lawful for a man to construct on his own freehold in the forest, mills, ponds, lime pits, ditches, and arable lands, provided these were not placed within the covert (that is in wooded places fit to shelter game) and did not infringe on any neighbour’s rights.[[935]] They might also keep eyries for breeding falcons and other birds of prey, and take honey found on their own ground—rights previously denied to them.[[936]]
(4) Interference with the pursuits of the poor. If the rich suffered injury in their property, the poor suffered in a more pungent way: stern laws prevented them from supplying three of their primary needs, food, firewood, and building materials. On no account could they kill deer; while difficulties surrounded the taking of timber from the woods.[[937]] It is true that even the Assize of Woodstock allowed them the privilege of “estovers,” that is of cutting firewood, but only under stringent rules. All waste was strictly prohibited; and “waste” was a wide word covering, not merely wanton destruction, but all sales or gifts of logs; while nothing could be taken except at sight of the forester, whose consent would not be procured for nothing. This may be illustrated from a period sixty years later than John’s reign: Hugh of Stratford, who paid two and a half marks of yearly rent to the Warden for his post, recouped himself by taking “from the township of Denshanger for every virgate of land one quarter of wheat in return for their having paling for their corn and for collecting dead wood for their fuel in the demesne wood of the lord king; and from the same town he took from every house a goose and a hen in every year.”[[938]] A small sum might be taken for every load of sticks; the men of Somerset complained that “from the poor they take, from every man who carries wood upon his back, sixpence.”[[939]] Dwellers within or near the forests were also prohibited from keeping dogs, unless their value for other pursuits, as well as for hunting, was destroyed by the removal of three claws of the forefoot.[[940]] Nor could they keep bows or arrows, so necessary for their protection amid the dangers which beset the inhabitants of lonely districts throughout the Middle Ages.[[941]] No tanner or bleacher of hides could reside in the forest districts, unless within the walls of a borough.[[942]]
(5) Attendance at forest courts. Unlike the grievances already mentioned which pressed chiefly on those within the forests, the burden of performing “suit” at the forest courts was specially resented by those who lived without. At every inquisition representatives from neighbouring townships must be present, while the entire population were compelled to meet the justices on their forest eyres. Henry II., whatever may have been the earlier practice, enforced this duty of attendance upon those outside the boundaries as well as on those within. The Assize of Woodstock admits no exemption for earl or baron, for knight or freeholder, nor even (according to one version) for archbishop or bishop. All and sundry must be present at the eyres. The double duty of doing suit at county courts and at forest courts meant a double loss of time, and double risk of amercement. This 11th Article of the Assize was repealed by chapter 44 of Magna Carta, which restricted the obligation to denizens of the forests, a concession confirmed in 1217.[[943]]
(6) Fines and punishments. Frequent exactions ground down the dwellers in the royal forests to abject poverty. If they failed to attend one of the numerous inquisitions, they paid a fine. If they failed to disclose the guilty poacher, they paid a fine. If they gave false information, they paid a fine. If they sold or gave away timber, they paid a fine. If they kept grey hounds or mastiffs, which had not been “lawed,” that is deprived of the requisite number of claws, they paid a fine.[[944]] If a bow or arrow were found in their keeping, they paid a fine. If they committed any one of the numerous forms of waste or trespass, they paid a fine. Truly, the wretched peasant must walk warily if he would preserve sufficient of his miserable pittance to keep himself, his wife and children, in life and health.
The Northamptonshire Eyre Roll of 1209 illustrates how a whole township might suffer severely for no fault of their own. "The head of a hart recently dead was found in the wood of Henry Dawney at Maidford by the king’s foresters. And the forester of the aforesaid Henry is dead. And because nothing can be ascertained of that hart, it is ordered that the whole of the aforesaid town of Maidford be seized into the king’s hand, on the ground that the said Henry can certify nothing of that hart."[[945]] There was clearly a strong inducement, in such cases, to find someone guilty.
In certain cases Henry II. would not accept a fine, but inflicted loss of limbs upon violators of the king’s monopoly. It was often better to kill a fellow-man than a boar or stag. Article 1 of the Assize of Woodstock announced that the full rigour of the laws would be enforced, as under Henry I., while article 12 laid down more definitely that sureties would only be accepted for two offences. For the third offence nothing would suffice save the body of the offender. John’s Magna Carta made no specific regulation on this head, although the general provision for abolishing “evil customs” afforded some relief. Chapter 10 of the Carta de foresta in 1217 conceded that no one should henceforth lose life or limb for such offences. The culprit should lie in prison for year and day, and thereafter find sureties for his future good behaviour, or failing such sureties be banished from the realm.
(7) Arbitrary government and illegal exactions. If the laws of Henry’s code were stringent and the legal payments onerous, it was a worse evil that the law, such as it was, could be safely defied by the Crown officials, and that payments of a perfectly illegal nature might be freely exacted. Within the forest bounds the peasantry lived in daily fear of the discretionary authority of officials, whose most unreasonable wishes they dared not oppose. Sometimes a local tyrant established a veritable reign of terror. This happened in the forest of Riddlington under Peter de Neville, as the records of the Rutland Eyre held in 1269 disclose. One item, taken almost at random from the long list of his evil deeds, will suffice: “The same Peter imprisoned Peter, the son of Constantine of Liddington, for two days and two nights at Allexton, and bound him with iron chains on suspicion of having taken a certain rabbit in Eastwood; and the same Peter the son of Constantine, gave two pence to the men of the aforesaid Peter of Neville, who had charge of him, to permit him to sit upon a certain bench in the gaol of the same Peter, which is full of water at the bottom.”[[946]] In this evil pit, miscalled a gaol, men illegally arrested on mere suspicion were allowed to rot or starve to death if they failed to pay heavy ransoms. Other examples are only too abundant. In 1225 Norman Samson, a petty official of the forest of Huntingdon, put men to the torture without cause, and only released them from their torments in return for heavy bribes. These petty despots were practically irresponsible, since the eyres were held at wide intervals of seven years. Even then the sufferers might hesitate to complain, fearing a worse fate when the backs of the justices were turned. If such things could happen after the grant of the charters of 1215 and 1217, it is not likely that the foresters were more merciful before. John was always too indifferent or too busy to redress such wrongs. The only guarantee against their recurrence in the future was that honest officials should be selected. Magna Carta sought to secure this by the provisions of chapter 45, which (occurring amongst the forest clauses) directed that no justiciar, sheriff, constable or bailiff should be appointed, except such as knew the law of the land and meant to observe it. The word constable included the wardens, while bailiff was wide enough to embrace the foresters. It is doubtful whether this clause would have effected any improvement; it was withdrawn in 1216.
Some good must have resulted from chapter 16 of the Forest Charter, which forbade wardens to hold pleas of the forest, and reserved them for the justices in eyre. This prevented wardens from being judges in their own cause; but their arbitrary acts continued to be plentiful under Henry III., as has been already shown. Blackmail, under thin disguises, was levied upon all who would escape the unwelcome attentions of those in power. Sixty years after Magna Carta the men of Somerset complained that “foresters come with horses at harvest time and collect every kind of corn in sheaves within the bounds of the forest and outside near the forest, and then they make their ale from that collection, and those who do not come there to drink and do not give money at their will are sorely punished at their pleas for dead wood, although the king has no demesne; nor does anyone dare to brew when the foresters brew, nor to sell ale so long as the foresters have any kind of ale to sell; and this every forester does year by year to the great grievance of the country.”[[947]]
Each one of these abuses had been specifically forbidden by chapter 7 of the Carta de foresta, which had prohibited the making of “scotale” and the collection of corn, lambs, and pigs. Such rules were easier to enunciate than to enforce.
VII. Later History of Forests and Forest Laws. The Forest Charter signally failed to secure a pure administration of the law; but two processes were at work which tended to lighten the burdens inflicted. The long struggle to define accurately the boundaries ended in the reign of Edward II. in the defeat of the king, who consented to the frontier being drawn to suit the barons.[[948]] Within these restricted limits, time and the progress of civilization gradually softened the severity of the forest code, many customs becoming obsolete.[[949]] Charles I. made an ill-judged attempt to revive some of the Crown’s long-forgotten rights. Justice-seats were held by the Earl of Holland, accompanied by amercements and attempts to extend the forest bounds.[[950]] The result was a drastic act of the Long Parliament limiting them to their old extents.[[951]] This statute, however, abolished neither the forests, the forest laws, nor the forest courts. After the Restoration a Justice-seat actually took place pro forma before the Earl of Oxford. Blackstone declares this to be the last ever held,[[952]] although the offices of justice and warden of the forests were not abolished till 1817.[[953]] The forests, much curtailed in extent, are still the property of the Crown, though now administered in the interests of the public by the Commissioners of Woods and Forests.[[954]] The operation of the common law is, of course, no longer excluded from their confines, the old antithesis between the forest law and the law of England being now a thing of the past.[[955]]