A HISTORY OF HAMPSHIRE 



are the woodlands necessarily forests. There is no legal definition of the 

 word forest. Even the Forest Acts passed in India during the last twenty 

 to twenty-five years carefully avoid any attempt at its specific definition. 

 The Hants forests are merely tracts which were at one time afforested 

 by royal command, and to which, not having since been disafforested 

 after any subsequent perambulation, the forest laws still apply. In early 

 times the king merely sent out a commission under the great seal of 

 England, for the view, perambulation, and bounding of certain tracts, 

 wooded or otherwise, which he desired to afforest ; and after this record 

 had been returned into the chancery the sheriff of the county was 

 ordered to proclaim that none should, without the king's special license, 

 hunt or chase any manner of wild beast within the said limits. It thus 

 became a chase (chaseus), or sanctuary for game and other wild animals; 

 but it was not a forest until certain forest officers had been appointed, when 

 it became subject to particular forest laws and to special courts and officers 

 for administering the same. No subject could appoint or maintain such 

 officers, hence only the king could possess a forest for his own use and 

 recreation. Any forest or portion of a forest granted to a subject conse- 

 quently again became at once a chase 1 ; because, although the other forest- 

 officers might remain, the justice in eyre, the highest officer of all and 

 essential to a forest, could only be appointed by, and act as, the commis- 

 sioner of the king. A chase was thus a large unenclosed tract forming 

 a sanctuary for beasts of venery. Usually smaller in area than a chase, 

 a park (parcus) was also a sanctuary for wild animals, and held by sub- 

 jects either through prescriptive right or else by license from the king. 

 But it differed from a chase in being ' imparked ' or enclosed within a 

 fence ; and if the enclosure was not maintained the king could seize on it, 

 and afforest it as being a free chase. Still lower than this in degree came 

 a warren (ivarrenus), defined by Co well as ' a Franchise or Place privi- 

 leged, either by Prescription or Grant from the King, to keep Beasts and 

 Fowls of Warren, which are Hares and Conies, Partridges and Pheasants. 

 . A Free-Warren may lie open, for there is no Necessity of 

 inclosing the same as there is of a Park ; which ought to be seized 

 into the King's Hands if it be not inclosed.' Chases, parks and warrens 

 were subject only to the common law of England, whereas forests were 

 solely subject to the forest law, at any rate ever since Henry III.'s time, 

 after the passing of the Charters of the Forest (1217, 1225). From the 

 time of Edward I. onwards most of the great nobles had chases or parks, 

 and the Patent Rolls frequently record the grant of royal license to 

 impark. In Cowell's Law Dictionary, 1727 (2nd edit., article 'Forest') 

 it is said that * Besides New Forest there are 68 Forests in England, 1 3 

 Chases, and more than 78 1 Parks.' These 68 forests are enumerated in 

 detail by St. John in his Observations on the Land Revenue of the Crown, 

 1787 (pp. 118-22). So far as Hants is concerned, the New Forest, 

 Bere, Alice Holt and Wolmer are there classed as ' real forests, which are 



1 Unless by a special Act of Parliament, as in the case of the Forest of Dean, granted, ai a Fortit, 

 to the Duke of Gloucester in 1390 (14 Richard II. c. 13). 



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