[922]. Statute of Merton, c. 11.
[923]. Select Pleas of the Forest, cxxiii.
[924]. Ibid., cxxviii-cxxix. Wild cats should perhaps be added.
[925]. See W. S. Houldsworth, History of English Law, p. 346.
[926]. See Select Charters, 552.
[927]. Some of these Magna Carta sought to guard against. See c. 48.
[928]. Rights of hunting were sometimes conferred on subjects over territory which was not their own. Richard I., by a charter, granted permission to Alan Basset to hunt foxes, hares, and wild cats throughout the realm. See Round, Ancient Charters, No. 18.
[929]. This is implied in the terms of Stephen’s Oxford Charter. An example of an act of afforestation by Henry is given in Select Pleas, 45, which shows how “a district could be afforested in a moment by the mere word of the monarch; it took centuries to free it from the royal dominion.” See Edinburgh Review, vol. cxcv. (1902), p. 459. Even the Forest Charter (cc. 1 and 3) admitted the Crown’s right to afforest woods on its own demesne—reserving, indeed, common of pasture to those with legal rights thereto.
[930]. The policy of Henry I., Stephen, and Henry II. respectively is well illustrated by the case of Waltham forest in Essex. See Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville, 377–8.
[931]. This group of grievances was partly remedied by chapters 47 and 53 of Magna Carta. The former provided for the summary disafforestation of all districts made forests by Richard and John, while the latter showed a more judicial spirit in the undoing of the similar work effected by their father. The Carta de Foresta of 1217 contained clauses which took the place of these somewhat crude provisions.