212 THE FORESTS OF ENGLAND. 



roused the feelings of the nation ; and six years afterward 

 we find the barons, &c. encamped in hostile array on 

 Runingmede from Monday the fifteenth to Friday the 

 nineteenth of June, 1215 ; during which time they were 

 actively engaged roughhewing the broad basis on which 

 the bulwarks of our liberty are built, by forming the 

 Magna Charta with King John. When the prelimi- 

 naries were adjusted, the articles agreed upon, and the 

 instrument sealed, which was a parchment ten inches and 

 three quarters broad, and twenty one and a half long ; 

 their next employment was to reduce them to the form of 

 a charter, of which such a number was made originally 

 that one was sent into every county, or at least into every 

 diocese. In this charter there were several transpositions 

 and alterations, and there were added in chap. 47 an 

 article concerning the disafforesting of forests; in chap. 

 48 one about the information to be given to the king by 

 the twelve knights before they should redress the griev- 

 ances of the forest ; and the whole of chap. 53, concerning 

 the respite of disafforesting the forests, which were 

 afforested by the king's father and brother. The people 

 of every class were so fond of the privileges of chap. 48, 

 that the archbishops of Canterbury and Dublin, with 

 several bishops and others, being alarmed at the havoc 

 made in the forests, entered a protest against the opinion 

 that the general words of this chapter should extend to 

 abolish the customs of the forest ; as without their exist- 

 ence the forests themselves could not be preserved. This 

 protest is among the records in the Tower of London." 



The following are extracts translated from the Magna 

 Charta of King John : 



" Ch. 44. Men who live out of the forest shall not be 

 brought for any cause before our justices of the forest by 

 common summonses, unless they are concerned in the cause, 

 or are the bail of those who are attached to the forest. 



" 47. All forests which have been afforested (or made 

 into forests) in our time, shall be immediately disafforested : 



