SOME REMARKS ON BRITISH FOREST HISTORY. 163 



(24, pp. xciii. ff.), and it is clear that in that century there was 

 a conscious movement towards improved farming,^ although 

 there seems to be no evidence that its effect was at all general. - 

 There was probably on the whole a rise in the standard of 

 comfort (22, i. 293 ff.^), and what is of importance for our 

 present purpose a greater demand for timber for building 

 purposes (22, i. 3S7, 439 ff. For details of timber used in 

 building in fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, see St Paul's MSS. 

 Nos. 1074, 1462-3, 1796; 25, pp. 12, 20, 50). On the other 

 hand, from the thirteenth century onwards coal was increasingly 

 used as fuel, at first principally for industrial purposes — lime- 

 burning and smith-work (4, p. 26) — but later for domestic 

 purposes by those who could not afford wood. Peat and turf 

 (26, pp. xiii. ff.) were cut and burned where these fuels could 

 be procured, and the latter certainly was imported into London 

 (27, E, p. 66). Timber was imported in quantity from overseas. 

 The evidence is clear in the thirteenth century^ and abundant in 

 the fourteenth (27, E, p. 65, F, 174; 29, ii. 4; 30, ii. 156; 

 25> P- 5°) No. 1796): it is slight for the twelfth (19/^, 32 

 Hen. II., pp. xxi., 116, 199), but it would appear that the 

 foreign timber trade had already begun in the eleventh century.^ 

 Both hardwood and softwood were imported (27, E, p. 65). 



Although we do not possess for Scotland such evidence as 

 exists for England whereon to base estimates of population 

 (baffling as the interpretation of that evidence is when numbers 

 are demanded), it is likely that in the Lowlands the development 

 both of population and the demands of the population were 

 parallel. We have evidence of the early use of coal and turf 

 (31, p. 26), and the import of timber from overseas, the trade 



^ Walter of Henley's Husbandry dales from this century : it became 

 immediately popular. Cf. II, p. 397. 



- See 12, i. 38 ff. , 50 ff. for evidence for fourteenth century. Cunningham 

 suggests a set-back in the fifteenth century, 22, p. 331, n. 4 : but see ibid., 

 pp. 407, 447 ff. 



^ The evidence for the fifteenth century is difficult to interpret : there may 

 have been, locally at all events, a temporary set-back (22, i. pp. 3S6 ff., 



439 ff.)- 



"• " Est land " boards were used in connection with Edward I.'s campaign 

 against Scotland at the end of the century : Liber Quotidianus Contraroltila- 

 toris Garderobae, p. 119. In 1292 we find a German merchant suing in the 

 London Mayor's Court for a sum due in respect of a hundred boards sold at 

 Lynn, 28, 109, No. i. 



* Billingsgate tolls: " De navi plena lignorum unum lignum ad teloneum ": 

 (233, p. 154). 



