46 History of the English Landed Interest. 



bandman wanted to stub up a few broom or furze roots, be was 

 liable to punishment at the hands of his landlord. " There 

 are other inconveniences in land besides weeds and trumpery," 

 writes Sir Eichard Weston in 1651, " viz., ill tenures, as copy- 

 hold, knight service, etc. So that the possessor cannot cut any 

 timber down without the consent of the lord, and when he 

 dies must pay one or two years' rents." He complained that, 

 owing to the destruction of our woods, we had to import boards 

 from Norway, plough staves and pipe staves from Prussia, 

 and were in many places badly off for fuel. Worse stiU, it 

 was getting rare to see a good tree ; owners were continually 

 selling timber and seldom planting substitutes for what they 

 had marketed, and a dearth of materials for ship and house- 

 building was already felt. 



Weston did not impute this state of affairs to any defects in 

 the law. " It is well known," ^ he says, " that we have good 

 laws, but it's better known they are not executed." More- 

 over, he did not advocate the preservation of timber on soils 

 suitable for agriculture, for he instances land in the neighbour- 

 hood of Tunbridge which formerly was wood, but now was let 

 for 30s. per acre — a case where to have kept it for wood would 

 have been a loss both to owner and nation. But he objected 

 to the stubbing up of woods on soils only suitable for trees, as 

 practised at Shooter's Hill, where the ground had been re- 

 claimed for nothing more profitable than furze. He wanted 

 to see the practice of a few gentlemen in sowing acorns be- 

 come more general, and he held up for universal example the 

 diligence of an Essex gentleman, who utilised all his low 

 moorish grounds by planting so many willows that he lopped 

 two thousand annually. Weston considered it wasteful economy 

 to devote good timber for the purposes of smelting iron, and 

 he praised the ingenuity of certain parties who had recently 

 taken out a patent for making iron with sea coal.^ 



From such evidences as these, we are not surprised to read, 

 in the Preface to Evelyn's work on Trees,^ that it was 

 " intended for the encouragement of an Industry and worthy 



* A Treatise of the Husbandry and Natural History of England, 165L 

 2 Id. Ibid, ^ Sylva of Evelyn, circa 1660. 



