70 THE ROYAL FORESTS OF ENGLAND 



forests that were so frequently made by our kings, from John 

 to Edward III., almost invariably specify that the wood was 

 oak. Such grants were largely made to religious houses, both 

 for their conventual buildings and their churches ; they were 

 also made from time to time for the repairs or the erection of 

 mills, bridges, castles, and manor houses. The trunks of 

 these oaks were, for the most part, sent whole to the recipients, 

 but occasionally the master forester had orders to supply so 

 many rafters, joists, tie-beams, or other roof timber ready for 

 use, and not infrequently shingles ready-trimmed for roofing, 

 or trees suitable for such a purpose. The selection of the trees 

 for timber purposes was usually left to the master forester or 

 keeper ; but in some cases, particularly where a river ran 

 through a forest, it was suggested in the warrant that trees 

 should be felled which were most convenient for carriage. 



Gifts of dead trees for firewood were fairly common, par- 

 ticularly to the religious houses, whilst a great number of 

 monasteries obtained chartered rights of sending carts into 

 the forest on particular days or at special seasons to obtain 

 fuel for their fires or ovens. 



Oaks were also the usual trees assigned as a perquisite to 

 the various officials at the time of holding an eyre ; and they 

 were also the "fee-trees" assigned yearly to certain forest 

 ministers. 



When the master forester of Duffield drew up his list of 

 trees felled through divers orders of the Earl of Lancaster for 

 the year 1313-14, they amounted to sixteen oaks (quercus] and 

 six robura. The precise meaning of robur, and in what it 

 differed from quercus^ is by no means easy to ascertain. The 

 two terms appear side by side in almost every old forest 

 account throughout England. Mr. Turner gives an interest- 

 ing dissertation on this (Pleas of the Forest, 147-8), wherein 

 he cites many uses of the word robur ; it is there considered 

 that it is equivalent to a pollarded tree of oak or any other 

 kind. A wider range of references, and particularly those of 

 a later date than the thirteenth century, would, we think, 

 qualify much that is there stated. Probably it may usually 

 mean an oak which has been pollarded ; but is it not possible 

 that quercus and robur, at all events in some forest rolls, were 

 the two indigenous varieties of oak, sessiliflora and pedun- 



