POLITICAL HISTORY 



1301, in the Parliament at Lincoln, which made the famous repudiation 

 of papal claims to interfere in the temporal relations of the British Isles, 

 perambulations with the purpose of doing away with new afforestations 

 were definitely ordered. The king had struggled to keep his position 

 by the words Safois jure coronce nostrce rationibus nostris et calumpniis, 

 but had been obliged at last to make a full concession. Yet no per- 

 ambulation of Windsor Forest was made, despite of complaints under 

 Edward II., till in 1327, when Edward III. was king and reforms of 

 various kinds were in the air, Parliament petitioned that forest per- 

 ambulations made should be observed, and that where not made, pursuant 

 to the promises of 1301, they should be undertaken. Letters patent 

 were accordingly issued, and commissioners ordered to call a court at 

 Chertsey, where a jury was impanelled and an inquiry held. Over- 

 ruling the objection that Surrey was ancient forest according to the 

 inquisition of 1280, and falsely, as we have said, attributing that to 

 Despencer, who in 1327 had just been hanged and was unpopular, 

 the court found that no part of Surrey was in the forest of Windsor. 

 They admitted however that the inquisition of 1280 had been held, 

 but said that no perambulation had been made under it. In accordance 

 with this verdict the king's writ directed a perambulation to be made, 

 which was done along the county boundary from the mouth of the 

 Wey to where Berkshire, Hampshire and Surrey join. A report of the 

 proceedings, was sent to the Court of Chancery. In the Court of Chancery 

 the county summoned the constable of Windsor to show cause why the 

 perambulation should not be confirmed, and after some delay a charter 

 was granted in the sense desired by the county, excluding all Surrey from 

 the forest jurisdiction. Yet north-west Surrey, from beyond the Wey 

 and the Hog's Back, remained a purlieu of Windsor Forest. The 

 king's ranger had special duties there of driving back beasts of chase 

 which escaped from the forest, and the king had rights over deer so 

 straying. In the Loseley correspondence constant complaints and dis- 

 putes about strayed deer are found as late as the reigns of Elizabeth 

 and James I. In Queen Anne's reign, when Woolmer Forest as well 

 as Windsor was full of deer, the most lordly beast of chase must have 

 been fairly common in the once forest lands of Surrey. Certainly well 

 within 200 years ago the poaching of wild deer and black game 

 was possible within thirty miles of London. The blackcock may linger 

 there still. 



There must, even in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, have 

 been a strong contrast between the outlying forests and the suburban 

 parts of Surrey. In the Chertsey Ledger (fol. 173^) it appears that 

 prisoners being removed from the abbot's prison at Chertsey for trial 

 at Guildford were liable to be rescued by their friends when passing 

 through the wild lands of the forest. 



In the north of the county Southwark, Lambeth and Bermondsey 

 shared in the life of London, and were made more prosperous by the 

 great suburban houses of several ecclesiastical dignitaries, the archbishop, 



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