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the foreft without due indictment, or being taken with 

 the mainour, or trefpafiing in the foreft ; and double 

 damages to the party grieved, and ranfom to the king, 

 were the penalty for offending againft this provifion. 



Here the regulations of the foreft feem to have refted 

 for many years. 



Under the Tudors, feverc ftatutes were enacted on 

 many fubjects ; and hunting in the forefts in the night 

 with painted vizors was made felony by the firft of 

 Henry the feventh. But this was probably neceflary 

 for the peace of the country. Henry the eighth, toward 

 the clofe of his reign, procured the entering into a foreft 

 with intent to fteal deer, to be made felony. This was 

 repealed by his fucceflbr, and Mary and Elizabeth ihewed 

 no difpofition to tyrannize through the means of foreft 

 law. 



Charles the firft, formed by nature for happier purpo- 

 fes, mifled by education, by prejudices, by paffions, 

 and by bad advice, during fixteen years attempted, in, 

 Various ways, to trample under his feet the rights and 

 liberties of his fubjects. All the tyrannies of the worft 

 of the Norman and Angevin princes before the acceffion 

 of Edward the firft, though repeatedly difavowed by that 

 prince and the whole fucceeding line of Plantagenet, 

 were put in practice by Charles, were juftified on the 

 fcore of ancient prerogative, and were attempted to be 

 enforced by exertion of the vaft ftrength of arbitrary ju- 

 rifdiftion which the Tudor princes had drawn from their 

 unwary or fubmiflive parliaments. The foreft law had 

 not been an object of the Tudors. Henry the feventh 

 probably had not thought it a profitable mean of exaction, 

 and Henry the eighth had no paflion which it gratified. 

 Thefe princes therefore had erected no ftarchamber to 

 inquire of offences againft foreft law ; and Charles could 



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