100 THE FORESTS OF ENGLAND. 



to extend over much if not over the whole area of the 

 forest. Silvanus Taylor in his treatise entitled Common 

 Good, dedicated to Parliament in 1652, when a sixth of 

 the land was in common, advised division and allotment. 

 This was ultimately done, but not until 160 years after 

 it was recommended by him recommended with the 

 quaint remark " not that the commoners would work on 

 their own allotments, for while the parish has to maintain 

 them they will not work." 



Taylor does not appear to have had a very high opinion 

 of the commoners in his day, and as things were then so 

 were they to the end ; but it should be borne in mind in 

 judging them that they had rights, and these rights they 

 were maintaining. In the History of Windsor Great Park 

 and Forest, by Mr Menzies, the author tells : " An old 

 Commoner has described to me, with evident self-con- 

 gratulation, how, one moonlight night on Christmas Eve, 

 when the forest officers were tapping their elder wine (a 

 custom which still exists) and not likely to disturb him, 

 he worked all night long, and had a quarter of an acre 

 added to his land before morning. A moonlight night was 

 the season for such operations ; if a commoner could only 

 build himself a hut of turf, and have a fire lighted and a 

 pot boiled on the rudest chimney, the hut became estab- 

 lished as a house was, in fact, his ' castle,' and was wholly 

 unassailable except by regular process of law, which the 

 forest officers frequently declined to institute ; the trouble 

 was immense, there was no remuneration, and the next 

 moonlight night saw the estate restored. If, however, the 

 pot had not been boiled on the hearth, the forest officers 

 might proceed without ceremony to pull the place down/ 



" A short time since the Crown purchased a cottage and 

 garden near the park, and on enquiring for the title the 

 following was the reply of the owner : < You see, sir, my 

 wife's father as was, so I have been told, lived in another 

 house near this about seventy or eighty years agone, and 

 there was a piece of waste land, as was part o' the common 

 that was handy, and so he first plants taturs on it, and 



