210 THE FORESTS OF ENGLAND. 



This first forest law of which we have any record was 

 passed in 1016. 



In the Histoire des Dues de Normandie et des Rois 

 iT Angleterre, it is told how William Rufus met his death 

 in " a new forest which he had caused to be made out 

 of eighteen parishes, which he had destroyed. 

 In which same forest his brother Richard ran so hard 

 against a tree that he died of it, and men censoriously said 

 that these things were because they had so laid waste 

 and taken the said parishes/' And these occurrences were 

 spoken of by the people as judgments of God passed 

 upon them for their oppressive selfish appropriation of 

 land which under culture had yielded food for man and 

 beast. 



The power granted to the kings by the forest laws 

 imposed by the Norman conquerors enabled them to 

 enclose any tract of forest they pleased, or to create new 

 forests not plantations of trees, but lands reserved for 

 their hunting, and this power was exercised with the 

 greatest tyranny. Under the Norman kings the breadth 

 of land appropriated as hunting grounds was greatly 

 increased. 



From the list of English forests given by Sir Henry 

 Spelman (ante p. 134), it appears that out of the forty 

 counties of England only fifteen of them, consisting chiefly 

 of those situated on the east coast, did not contain forests, 

 while some counties, such as York, contained five or six. 

 And it is said that, what with their own possessions and 

 the encroachments they were perpetually making on the 

 property of their subjects, the kings of England had at 

 length one-eighth of the counties in their possession as 

 royal forests. 



Originally the deer and other wild beasts, and the right 

 of hunting them, was what was claimed by the crown ; 

 but at length the forests themselves were brought under 

 the same class of laws without reference to the game; and 



