PLACE AND FIELD NAMES OF DERBYSHIRE. 61 
various species of pigs which now abound. The hunting of the 
wild boar for several centuries after the Norman Conquest was 
one of the chief amusements of the nobility. It was strictly 
preserved in the Royal forests, and in the Charter of Canute, to 
which allusion has already been made, it is included among “the 
beasts of the forest.” As late as the reign of King John, these 
animals were inhabitants of Derbyshire in their wild state, for at 
that time a grant was made to the Monastery of Lenton of tithe 
of the game taken in the counties of Derby and Nottingham— 
viz., of stags and hinds, bucks and does, and of boars and swine.* 
That the Celtic inhabitants had domesticated the hog is proved 
from the presence on some of their coins of a sow and her litter, 
with an attendant or swineherd standing by her. The Anglo- 
Saxons placed the utmost value on their herds of swine. They 
were careful to preserve their vast woods, not so much for the 
sake of the timber, as for the acorns and beech mast. The 
expressions used in the ‘‘ Domesday” Survey, such as— 
‘silva infructuosa—inutilis—ad ignem tantum—nil reddens—sine 
pasnagio, etc., etc., which frequently occur, prove that timber 
was chiefly valued when affording sustenance for the swine. The 
_ value of the tree was even estimated by the number of hogs that 
could lie under its shade.t In the ninth section of the 
_ celebrated Charter of Henry III., for the Freedom of the 
_ Forests, it is laid down that, “Every freeman may take 
-agistments in his own wood, within our forests, at his own 
pleasure, and shall take his pannage, and may drive his swine 
freely to agist them in their own woods, and if the swine tarry one 
night it is no offence.” t 
* Dugdale, Monast. Angl., voli. p. 648. 
+ In the laws of Ina we read :—‘‘ Si quis autem detruncet autem arborem 
‘sub qua triginta porci consistere queunt, et fiat convictus, solvat sexaginta 
solidos.” See also Nichols, Ast. Lezc., vol. i. p. 43. Ellis, Zutroduction to 
Domesday Book, vol. i. p. 99. 
_ & Percival Lewis, Forests and Forest Laws, p. 149. Of the meaning of the 
words agistment and pannage and of their etymology there is some doubt. 
Cowel, in his Zaw Dictionary, derives agistment from gis¢, a bed, a harbour, 
_and hence taking in and feeding. Minshzus says, ‘‘ Agistment is the Common 
of herbage of any kind of land or woods, and Pannage is most properly the 
mast of the woods.” Hence Skinner’s derivation in his Etymologicum of 
_ pannage, otherwise pasnagium, as being derived from Lat. fastus, is probably 
Correct. See also Zhe Modern World of Words, 1696. 
