THE "CHARTA FOKESTA." 219 



them to the vienders of the province; (3) and when they 

 be enrolled and enclosed under the seal of the vienders, 

 they shall be presented to our chief justicers of our forest 

 when they shall come into those parts to hold the pleas of 

 the forest, and before them they shall be determined; 

 (4) and these liberties of the forest we have granted to all 

 men, saving to archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, earls, 

 barons, knights, and to other persons, as well spiritual as 

 temporal, Templars, Hospitallers, their liberty and free 

 customs, as well within the forest as without, and in warrens 

 and other places which they have had. (5) All these liberties 

 and customs we, &c., as it follow eth in the end of the great 

 charter specified. That is, that the clergy, nobility, and 

 gentry had given the king the fifteenth part of all their 

 movables ; and that the king, for himself and his heirs, 

 should do nothing to infringe, or break any of the liberties 

 of the charter, which is witnessed by a great number of 

 nobility and gentry therein named." 



The forests which were made by Henry II. or by John, 

 had their boundaries known by record ; for there was a 

 perambulation of them taken in the time of Edward I, and 

 notice was given, in the several forest counties, to all con- 

 cerned to appear at a certain time and place, to show cause, if 

 they had any, why the perambulation should not be con- 

 firmed ; and according to Matthew Paris, all the new made 

 forests were disforested, and the perambulation confirmed 

 on the 14th of February 1300, being the 28th of Edward L; 

 and these borders,then fixed/were to continue for ever. ' This 

 seems/ says Blackstone, ' to have been the final and com- 

 plete establishment of these two charters of liberties and of 

 the forest; which, from their first concession under King 

 John, A.D. 1215, had been often endangered and undergone 

 very many mutations for the space of near a century, but 

 were now fixed upon eternal bases, having in all, before and 

 since this time (as Sir Edward Coke observes), been estab- 

 lished, confirmed, and commanded to be put in execution 

 by two and thirty several acts of parliament/ 



