1 62 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



much pasture, meadow, and arable land as well as wood, heath, 

 and waste, many a farm and many a village" (13^, p. i). 

 Forest was not necessarily woodland and woodland was not 

 necessarily forest. And while there is some presumptive 

 evidence that forest law operated in restraint of the destruction 

 of timber, the evidence will not carry us very far. The justices 

 who enforced the Assize of the Forest of 1184 inflicted many 

 fines "pro wasto bosci," "pro quercubus succisis," etc. (19). 

 Private persons were just as jealous of the destruction of 

 their woods as any royal officer in the king's forests (18, 

 pp. 87-8, 98 ; 19) : and the great woodlands of the Weald which 

 remained to supply fuel for the iron industry until the eighteenth 

 century were, in Kent at least, so far as is known, never subject 

 to forest law (see Furley's Weald of Kent, i. p. 371 and 21, 

 i. p. 471-2). In point of fact there is no evidence that forest 

 law did effect any serious check upon the destruction of woodland, 

 in the face of the gradual increase of population and consequent 

 pressure of agriculture and industry. The innumerable fines 

 for essarts as well as for waste (that is, the felling of timber in 

 private woods within a forest beyond what was considered 

 necessary by the royal forester), which fill the Pipe Rolls that 

 record the proceedings of the justices in Henry II. 's later years, 

 are sufficient evidence of the process actually in operation.^ 

 The population of England may have doubled between the end 

 of the eleventh ^ and the beginning of the fourteenth century, 

 possibly more than doubled : it was probably no larger and 

 may have been rather smaller at the beginning of the sixteenth 

 century. 2 The increased population had to be fed, and imports 

 of corn being "exceptional and sporadic" (23a, p. loi),* the 

 only means were an extension of the arable or higher farming. 

 The gradual relaxation of the forest laws doubtless benefited 

 agriculture to some extent from the thirteenth century onwards 



^ Cf. Dialogus de Scaccario {Oxford Edition), pp. 102 ff. ; Charter of the 

 Forest, c. 4 (releasing landowners from payments for purprestures, wastes, 

 and essarts) and c. 14 (especially reference to " mercatores [qui] veniunt 

 per licentiam suam [sc. forestarii] in ballivam suam ad buscam, meremum, 

 corticem vel carbonem eniendum, et alias ducendum ad vendendum ubi 

 voluerint "). 



'^ For an estimate see 11, p. 437. 



^ For a summary of the discussion see 22, i. 331-2. 



^ In the fifteenth century the trade appears to be growing {ibid., pp. loi, 

 271 fif. ): but throughout the period the exports were at least as considerable 

 as the imports (ibid., pp. no fif., 281 ff. ). 



