736 MANUAL OF MODERN FARRIERY. 



for the preservation of the vert and venison ; and so it 

 hecometh deforest by matter of record." 



Strictly speaking, a forest cannot be in the hands of any 

 one but the king, because no other person has power to grant 

 a commission to be a justice in eyre, to hold courts, ko,. 



Canute made a law, that every freeman who hunted a stag 

 until he panted, was punished by loss of liberty for one year ; 

 and if he was a bondsman, he was outlawed. The Norman 

 kings not only enclosed forests, but also punished with the 

 utmost severity those who hunted and killed any of the 

 beasts. As an instance of which we are informed by Bromp- 

 ton, that William I. caused the eyes of a man to be plucked 

 out, who took either a buck or a boar. In some cases they 

 were punished with death ; and Knighton tells us that Wil- 

 liam Rufus would hang a man for taking a doe. 



Henry I. considered it as great a crime to kill a buck as a 

 man, and punished those who destroyed the game (though 

 not in the forest) either by forfeiture of their goods, or by 

 lost of a limb. Henry 11. was less arbitrary, and restricted 

 it to personal imprisonment for a limited time. Hichard I. 

 revived the old laws of castration and putting out the qjqs 

 of the delinquent. He, however, afterwards abolished those 

 cruel punishments, and appointed those convicted to abjure 

 the realm, be committed, or pay a fine. 



We are informed by those historians who wrote at the 

 time the New Forest, in Hampshire, was formed, that it was 

 done at the expense of breaking up twenty-two parish 

 churches, and many villages, chapels, and manors, for the 

 space of thirty miles.* To this circumstance some attributed 



* Walter Mapes, who wrote in the following age, gives what we 

 must suppose to be an exaggerated account of that event. He says, 

 *' The Conqueror took away much land from God and man ; converted 

 its use to wild beasts, and the sport of dogs ; demolished thirty-six 



