Forest of Rossendale. 8i 



held their several properties on the title which their grants, founded 

 on this Commission, bestowed. That the titles were genuine and 

 incontrovertible was not once doubted. Houses and Farmsteads 

 were erected. Lands were cleared, drained, manured, and tilled, 

 and in the course of time became much enhanced in value. 

 Sales of the Property had been negotiated on the strength of those 

 titles. Children had succeeded their parents as heirs to the 

 various Estates, their interest therein, and legal right thereto, being 

 unquestioned, and, as they believed, unquestionable. Thus mat- 

 ters stood until the Crown Lawyers of the time of King James I. 

 discovered what they declared was a defective title on the 

 part of the copy-holders. (^) This discovery was thus set forth in 

 a letter bearing date April 5, 1607, and addressed to Mr. Auditor 

 Fanshaw, and Ralph Asheton, of Lever, Esq., deputy steward : — 

 " There are within his Majesty's honor of Clitheroe, divers lands 

 which have been only granted by the steward, and by warrant to 

 the steward made, which parcels have been improved out of his 

 majesty's forests and chases, there commonly called lands of the 

 new-hold, which are only, however, of the nature of essart (r) land, 

 and cannot be claimed by custom or prescription to be copyholds." 



" This," says Dr. Whitaker, " was a thunderstroke — as it shook 

 to the foundation the titles of twenty-five thousand I,ancashire 

 acres of land, and destroyed the comforts and the hopes of many 



(A) " In consequence of this [the king's] commission grants of the vaccaries 

 were made ; and upon the faith ot these titles, houses were built, and im- 

 provements, such as the soil was capable of, were made ; lands were bought 

 and sold ; the first grantees died off, and their heirs or other representatives 

 were regularly admitted in perfect security for more than a century, when 

 the Crown Lawyers of James I. discovered, or pretended to discover, that 

 copyholds of inheritance could not be created, that the lands of the new-hold 

 tenure were of the nature of essart lands, and the occupants, a sort of ten- 

 ants by sufferance." — Hist. Whalley, third edition, p. 209. 



(r) " If a Man hath any Woods or Underwoods, or any other Coverts in the 

 Forest, as Heath, Broom, Fern, and he cut it down, or pull it up by the Roots, 

 that the Land is made plain, or converted into Arable or Pastures, then 'tis 

 called assart of the Forest, or Land assarted." — Manwood, ed. 1717, p. 20. 



