FORESTRY IN THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 1 49 



Leaving on one side for the moment an account of English 

 forest law, based apparently upon Nelson's edition of Manwood, 

 an unsafe guide to the mediaeval period, we find the statement 

 that "Edward I. carried on this policy of disafforesting large 

 areas of the Royal forests and lightening the burdens of the 

 Forest law." The truth is that Edward, having given way to 

 political pressure, obtained dispensation from the Pope and 

 revoked and annulled the grants and disafforestments which he 

 had been forced to make. The struggle continued in the reign 

 of his two successors, with the final result that large areas were 

 eventually removed from forest jurisdiction. It is, however, a 

 strange misreading of history to suggest that mediaeval sovereigns 

 willingly renounced their privileges, and Edward I. above all, who 

 "derived great pleasure from hawking and hunting, and had 

 a special joy in chasing down stags on a fleet horse and slaying 

 them with a sword instead of a hunting spear," and who, as 

 Professor Tout says, "never willingly surrendered the most 

 insignificant of his prerogatives." 1 



Mr Stebbing proceeds to trace the effect of mediaeval forest 

 law, and tells us that "one curious result of the high-handed 

 action of the Norman kings ... is that by the end of the 

 eighteenth century the only areas of the old forests of the country 

 left were the remnants of the Royal forests of Dean, Windsor, 

 the New Forest, Epping, etc. For assuredly, but for the fact 

 that these remained Royal forests — i.e. were not ' disafforested' — 

 they would have disappeared with the rest ..." 



To-day more than 95 per cent, of the area of woodland in 

 England and Wales is privately owned, and a not very much 

 greater area of Royal forest was under timber at the beginning of 

 the nineteenth century than now. 2 The great bulk of the wooded 

 area at that date was privately owned, and although, doubtless, 

 at some time in large measure subject to forest law — the precise 

 extent of mediaeval Royal forests is still a matter of conjecture — 

 it had long ceased to be troubled by any special jurisdiction. 

 To suggest that the survival of an attenuated jurisdiction in very 

 limited districts had any effect upon the conservation of wood- 

 lands, whether in the possession of the Crown or of private 

 persons, points to a surprising ignorance of the management of 

 Crown forests in the past. Some indication of the system 



1 Political History of England, Hi., pp. 136, 138. 

 2 Cd. 74S8, pp. II, 19, seq. 



