SEVEKITY OF NORMAX G.^^iIE LAWS. 5 



of the same tyrannic principle King John laid a total 

 interdict upon the winged as well as the fonr-footed 

 creation. " Capturam avium per totam Angliam inter- 

 dixit." The cruel and insufferable hardshijjs which the 

 rigorous forest laws inflicted on the subject induced our 

 ancestors to be as zealous for their reformation as for 

 tlie relaxatioD of the feudal rigours introduced by the 

 Norman family. In consequence of this, we find that 

 the immunities of Charta de Foresta, as warmly con- 

 tended for, and extorted from the King with as much 

 difficult}^, as those of ]Magna Charta itself.* 



By this charter, confirmed by King Henry the Third, 

 man}^ forests were stripped of their oppressive privileges 

 and new regulations were made, especially that by which 

 killing the king's deer was no longer a capital offence, 

 but only to be punished by a fine, imprisonment, or 

 banishment from the kingdom ; and by a variety of 

 statutes subsequently framed this is no longer a griev- 

 ance to the subject. But no man, unless he who has 

 a chase or free warren by grant from the crown, or 

 prescription which supposes one, can be justified hunt- 

 ing or sporting upon another man's land, nor indeed, in 

 thorough strictness of common law, can either hunt 

 or shoot. In fact, most of the ancient feudal laws, 

 as I have above stated regarding the right of sporting, 

 may be now considered obsolete, for this good reason, 



* We find in Warburton's " History of the Life of Prince Eupert," 

 tlaat King Charles I. and the prince followed the chase vrith. enthusiasm ; 

 but to gratify this passion, he sacrificed the long sacred immunities of 

 British property, by enclosing Eichmond Park, ■with almost as little 

 ceremony as the Norman Conqueror displayed in making the New Forest, 

 for the gi-eater conyenieuce of having red as well as fallow deer near his 

 residence. 



