THE FOREST OF EXMOOR. 139 



liberty to him to build a lodge in the forest at his 

 charges, and to enclose and lay 100 acres of land 

 thereunto." According to that the old enclosure 

 can only have been eight acres. 



With the exception of Oare and possibly Simons- 

 bath and Picked Stones, the forest of Exmoor, 

 putting aside the encroachments, was always 

 an uninhabited stretch of land, and in this way 

 differed widely from the other royal forests, which 

 included farms and villages within their limits, and 

 in consequence the forest laws, which were mainly 

 directed against dwellers in the forest, pressed less 

 hardly than in other places, but to the dwellers in the 

 encroachments, who felt that they were wrongfully 

 tyrannised over, they must, while still in force, have 

 been specially odious. 



Great tracts of land surrounding the forest were, 

 as we have seen at various times, disafforested. 

 They then became pouralles, or purlieus, of the 

 forest, and were still subject to certain restrictions 

 and disabilities. The foresters could still come over 

 these lands to drive the deer back to the forest. 

 The owner of a purlieu, or, as Manwood calls him, 

 a purlieuman, had a restricted right of hunting. He 

 might hunt a deer on his own land, and if found on 

 his own land he might follow it anywhere except 

 on to the King's forest, and might take the deer if 

 he could, but if his hounds ran on to the forest and 

 he was unable to stop them, he might not enter 

 himself, but had to blow a " rechase " on his horn 



