THE FOREST COURTS n 



made ; this was termed the Regard. The duty of the twelve 

 or more knights, who were called the Regarders, was to draw 

 up answers to a long set of interrogatories termed the Chapter, 

 which covered almost every possible particular as to the con- 

 dition of the forest demesnes. But the most important function 

 the regarders discharged was as to the assarts, or enclosures 

 of waste with or without warrant, and to purprestures, or 

 encroachments made by the building of houses or the like. 

 In practice the full formal regard, with its complete roll of 

 answers, was usually only made shortly before the holding 

 of each eyre, when the sheriff was ordered by the Crown to 

 see to the regard being duly performed. 



The amount of business that had to be transacted at these 

 eyres was very considerable, and usually involved repeated 

 adjournments. The work would have been still greater if 

 it had not been that a large number of the delinquents 

 were naturally dead before ever the court was held ; and 

 that not a few of the former offenders, who had been re- 

 leased on bail, had passed out of the jurisdiction of the sheriff, 

 and could not be traced. The proceedings of the court were, 

 roughly speaking, divided into two parts the pleas of vert 

 and the pleas of venison. In both cases the chief object of 

 the proceedings was the collection of fines and amercements 

 for breaches of the forest laws, which contrary to the usual 

 opinion had little, if any, trace of the old Norman severity. 

 In fact, so far was this from being the case, that if a man was 

 determined to poach venison, he met with far lighter punish- 

 ment if the offence was committed in a royal forest, than if he 

 was dealt with by the common or manorial law for a like 

 offence in a private park. The first forest code (usually cited 

 as the Assize of Woodstock) was extant in the time of 

 Henry II. ; it records the severities of his grandfather, when 

 cruel mutilation and capital punishment, irredeemable by any 

 ^ forfeiture, were among the ordinary penalties ; but all this dis- 

 appeared in the thirteenth century. 



The presence of the reeve and four men from each township 

 was strictly enforced ; and the fines for total absence, or absence 

 at the opening of the court, of these and others who were 

 summoned, were rigorously exacted. The consideration of the 

 essoins, or excuses for non-attendance, was always the first 



