50 

 King : " How dared you slay him ? 



him.' 



King : " How dared you slay him ? 



Burgher : " The hounds drove him to me, and I, standing opposite, pierced 



King : " Thou was bold." 



In proof of the severity of game or forest laws in those days it is stated 

 that even travelling was attended with some penal regulations: „ ,rf ^a stranger 

 in any part went out of the road or through woods it wa* a law that he ^ should 

 either shout aloud or blow with a horn, on the pain of being deemed a thief or 

 purloiner of the Kicg's deer, &c. From the peril of the roads in those days he 

 poverty of the middling and lower orders, and the violence and rapacity of the 

 barons and knights, which was very notorious, travelling was a very rare occur- 

 rence even for mercantile purposes, and for pleasure, as in these days, it was almost 

 unknown. Few men, in fact, then, left their towns or burghs but f or pdla o 

 or revenge, and this law, therefore, in regard to travellers, was by no means 

 needless. It may sound strange to us, too, for a person setting out on his travels 

 to carry a horn with him, but the fact is that up to even a comparatively ate 

 date, many of the English roads were in such a bad and intricate condition 

 that a horn to show the whereabouts or to sound for assistance when a traveller 

 lost his way was a real necessity. Even in my younger days the Hereforu- 

 shire lanes were so narrow and the hedges so high that a farmers waggon, 

 if sent off its own premises, almost invariably had a sort of arched bow over 

 the collar with four or five bells suspended in it, which could be heard a mile 01 

 more in advance by a team coming in a contrary direction, and thus give notice 

 in time to draw aside in some gateway or wide place. To pass, otherwise, would 

 have been literally impracticable. 



The eccentric Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, of Coldbrook-house, near 

 Abergavenny, writing to a friend in London on the state of the roads m 

 Monmouthshire in 1743 says, "O, as for roads, our highways are ditches, and 

 our lanes watercourses;" and till within these ten years, or less time one or 

 the principal roads leading through the village of Ewyas Harold was literally 

 a watercourse. 



But to return to the tyranny of Kings and the Forest laws of the olden 

 times By a law of Canute the Dane (1020). The barons or higher- orders who 

 were then few in number, were allowed "to hunt in fields and woodsthat were 

 their own, provided it did not interfere with the King's hunting." The Anglo- 

 Norman kings punished persons killing deer in the Royal forests, which were 

 then numerous, "sometimes by actual hanging, and frequently by loss of limbs, 

 putting out the eyes, or other mutilations " ( Warrington). 



Haywood, as already shown, was a Royal forest at a very early period, 

 and noted for the abundance and variety of its game, nevertheless it is only 

 from casual references that we can obtain any positive data respecting it. Mr. 

 Blount in reference to it, informs us in his M.S. that in the reign of Stephen 

 (ad 1110) a Henry de Kilpeck, Lord of Kilpeck Castle, was fined 100 marks 



