io OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS 



as became the case soon after this latter date. 

 Under the Saxons and Danes only untenanted 

 tracts were afforested, and the penalties for forest 

 offences were mild in comparison with the 

 savage punishments under the despotic rule of 

 the Normans. 



In his treatise on laws and land-tenures Cowell 

 enumerates sixty-eight forests in England as 

 existing at the time of the overthrow of the 

 Saxon kingdom, but St. John shows them, in his 

 work on Land Revenue, to have been more 

 numerous. No doubt in early Saxon times the 

 whole country was more or less covered with 

 woodlands, broken into here and there by culti- 

 vated lands. Most of the woods in the later 

 Saxon and the Danish periods seem to have been 

 usually of comparatively small size, for Domes- 

 day Book only takes cognisance of the five great 

 forests the New Forest in Hampshire, Windsor 

 in Berkshire, Whichwood or Hucheuuode in 

 Oxfordshire, Wimborne or Winburne in Dorset, 

 and Gravelinges in Wiltshire. It seems strange 

 that no particular mention was made in it of the 

 extensive Middlesex forest, of the Waltham, 

 Hainault, and Epping forests in Essex, of Rock- 



