184 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY, 



was likely to be done, and evasion was not always difficult. ^ 

 The net result was that legislation was largely abortive : 

 prosecutions were rare : - in Ireland infractions of the law 

 appear to have met with nothing more serious than disapproval.^ 

 Landlords continued to sell or fell their woods : they pocketed 

 the price, and nothing in particular happened. A wood felled 

 might be a dreadful portent to the country-side and create local 

 scarcity of fuel for a time : but men were not long discovering 

 that industry continued, and in some way or other men continued 

 to warm themselves and cook their food. 



A letter written in December 1571, regarding a proposal to 

 manufacture iron, admirably illustrates the general attitude of 

 mind and the circumstances of the period : 



"Thus muche I dyd learne uppon Satterdaye last by very 

 honest men, who were in hand with me very earnestly to buy 

 wood for the same purpose, and gladly wold bestow a hundreth 

 powndes or more yf yt maye please youre wurshippe to consyder 

 hereof. It is thowght bye them that have travayled longe in 

 the aforsayd trayde that youre wooddes wyllbe better sold, and 

 more gayne to you, then yf you shuld sett uppe smythis, 

 considerynge the great charge and trobble that doth belonge 

 unto them. And further the[y] saye yf you shuld set them uppe, 

 youre wooddes wold not serve you iiij yere, and youre woodde 

 beynge gone, there is not any leafte in the cowntrey to be 

 bowght, except it be Drayton lordshyppe." * 



Timber could be turned into ready money, and it has for 

 many centuries been the resort of the needy — and enterprising. 

 But the clearing of woods has not uncommonly been looked 

 upon as an unneighbourly act, and whoever did so has been 

 pretty certain to get into bad odour : and by a natural process 

 the unpopular party of the moment has been apt to get the 

 charge of destroying woods hurled at its head. The monks, just 

 before their dispossession, were suspected of trying thus to steal 

 a march upon the crown. ■' William Harrison fastened the 



' Harrison, op. cit., p. 202; Standish, New Directions, p. 3; Varranton, 

 England's Improvement, Second Part, p. 73. 



- Prosecutions under the Act of 1544 are, however, recorded in the seven- 

 teenth century : Cunningham, op. cit., ii. 523. 



'^ Cal. .State Papers {Ireland), 1611-14, pp. 64-5 ; 1615-25, p. 428. 



* Middle ton MSS., pp. 494-5. 



^Letters and Papers, ix. 375; .xiii. i. 175, 387, 499, 501, ii. 123, 278, 

 294, 478, 521. 



