FORMER GAME LAWS. 239 



" This famous code is ably explained by that excellent 

 commentator on the laws of England, Sir Wm. Blackstone, 

 in the following words (vol. iv., p. 408, 4th edit.) : 'Another 

 violent alteration of the English constitution consisted in 

 the depopulation of whole countries, for the purposes of 

 the King's royal diversion ; and subjecting both them, and 

 all the ancient forests of the kingdom, to the unreasonable 

 severities of forest laws imported from the continent, 

 whereby the slaughter of a beast was made almost as penal 

 as the death of a man. In the Saxon times, though no 

 man was allowed to kill or chase the king's deer, yet he 

 might start any game and pursue and kill it upon his own 

 estate. But the rigour of these new constitutions vested 

 the sole property of all the game in England in the king 

 alone ; and no man was entitled to disturb any fowl of the 

 air, or any beast of the field, of such kind as were specially 

 reserved for the royal amusement of the sovereign, without 

 express licence from the king, by grant of a chase or free 

 warren ; and those franchises were granted, as much with 

 a view to preserve the breed of animals, as to indulge the 

 subject. From a similar principle to which, though the 

 forest laws are now mitigated, and by degrees grown 

 entirely obsolete, yet from this root has sprung a bastard 

 slip, known by the name of the Game Law, now arrived to, 

 and wantoning in its highest vigour; both founded upon 

 the same unreasonable notions of permanent property in 

 wild creatures; and both productive of the same tyranny 

 to the commons ; but with this difference, that the forest 

 laws established only one mighty hunter throughout the 

 land, the game laws have raised a little Nimrod in every 

 manor. And in one respect the ancient law was much 

 less unreasonable than the modern : for the king's grantee 

 of a chase, or free warren, might kill game in every 

 part of his franchise ; but now though a freeholder of less 

 than 100 a year is forbidden to kill a partridge upon his 

 own estate, yet nobody else (not even the lord of the 

 manor, unless he hath a grant of free warren) can do it 

 without committing a trespass, and subjecting himself to 

 an action.' 



