FOEESTAL LITERATURE. 255 



meanours and forest rights, being the Court of Eyre. The 

 court is so named from a corruption of an old French term 

 applied to it as a circuit court, described here as " The 

 seat of the justices itinerants of the forest." 



The author of the paper goes on to say : " But when 

 forests were first used here in England, for my part I find 

 no certain time of the beginning thereof. Yet I think 

 the name of ' forest ' was known in England, though not 

 in the same sense as now it is taken ; and although that 

 ever since the Conquest (as the readers upon the statutes 

 de foresta do hold) it hath been lawful for the king to make 

 any man's land (whom it pleased him) to be forest, yet 

 there are certain rules and circumstances appointed for 

 the doing thereof." 



He states that a forest is constituted by what is called a 

 writ of perambulation being issued by the sovereign, 

 " directed unto certain discreet men, commanding them to 

 call before them twenty-four knights and principal free- 

 holders, and to cause them, in the presence of the officers 

 of the forest, to walk or perambulate as much ground as 

 they shall think to be fit and convenient for the breeding, 

 feeding, and securing of the king's deer; and to put the 

 same in wilting, and to certify the same under the seals of 

 the same commissioners, and to lodge the same in the 

 chancery. After the full execution of which writ of pro- 

 clamation, it is to be sent unto that shire to the sheriff 

 thereof, commanding him to proclaim the same to be a 

 forest, although it be the land of any subject or of the 

 king." 



In accordance with this is the account given by Man- 

 wood of How a forest may be made. Mr Lee proceeds : 

 " And as there are prescribed circumstances to the making 

 of a forest, so there are set down diverse laws and ordin- 

 ances by the statutes of Charta de Foresta and of Articuli 

 de Foresta, and other ordinances for the preservation 

 thereof, which, in truth, may be more rightly accounted 

 qualifications of the rigorous laws of William the Con- 

 queror, qui pro feris homines, mutilavit, exheredavit, incarceravit, 



