SOME REMARKS ON BRITISH FOREST HISTORY. 165 



view of a cultivated Frenchman writing about 1460. Says the 

 Herald of France : " To say the truth, more hewn timber can 

 be had in France for ten crowns than you can have in England 

 for fifty. It is also the fact that, in consequence of the high 

 price of wood, you are obliged to warm yourselves and cook 

 your food with coal, which you would not do if wood were 

 cheap" (35, pp. 51-2). 



He says again: "Also by reason of the great extent of 

 cultivation, there are hardly any woods, but the people warm 

 themselves with coal which they dig up from the ground " (35, 

 p. 62). 



Allowance must be made here for gross exaggeration in a 

 comparison instituted to display French superiority, and it 

 would be unwise to use the passage as a picture of the 

 conditions which the English statute of 1483 was devised to 

 remedy. This statute, to which undue prominence has been 

 given by Dr Nisbet and subsequent writers, was, in truth, but 

 of limited scope, intended to remove the necessity for applying 

 for licence to enclose coppice or seedlings for a period longer 

 than three years, or at the utmost to redress a grievance of a 

 comparatively small number of landowners, as appears clear 

 from the phraseology of the statute. That it was in any way 

 effective in increasing timber supplies there appears to be no 

 evidence. It is probably true that in certain localities, par- 

 ticularly near the larger towns throughout Britain, the supply 

 of wood-fuel was a matter of some difficulty. Coal could not 

 be used for smelting (4, p. 26), and was disliked as domestic 

 fuel.^ It is possible that suitable ships timber was not easily 

 accessible and was highly priced as compared with certain 

 foreign countries,- and there is some evidence that native timber 

 may have been preferred to foreign for building purposes.^ 

 But yet in view of what is known of timber supplies in later 



^ In 1282 it was agreed by the Mayor and citizens of London that they 

 would not "suffer those which shall dwell in the said shopps [by St Paul's] 

 to burne any seacooles in the same, or such other thinges which doe stinke " 

 (25, p. 51, No. 1802). 



- " A ship which may be built in France for a thousand or twelve hundred 

 crowns would cost more than two thousand nobles in England" (35, p. 52). 



^ " Englyssh hordes" were specified in a building contract in I Henry V. 

 (25, p. 32, No. 329). On the other hand, we may find " Estland " or 

 " Estricchebord " specified in 1369 and 1410 : ibid., pp. 20, No. 1462, 

 50, No. 1796. 



