32 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS 



give judgment or assess any fines. The jury 

 empanelled before the "Justice Seat consisted of 

 eighteen, twenty, or twenty-four men chosen from 

 among the freeholders and others present. Here, 

 too, all manner of offences were adjudicated on, 

 from offences against vert and venison, or ex- 

 tortions by the forest officers, down to mis- 

 behaviour and abusive words. One Sir Charles 

 Howard was even fined one hundred pounds, and 

 was committed until he paid them, for saying that 

 proceedings had been carried against him with a 

 high hand in respect of certain trees he had 

 felled, and that he would have the matter heard 

 in another place. 



Forty days' notice had to be given before the 

 Justice Seat was held in every third year. Being 

 a Court of Record, it could adjudge both fine 

 and imprisonment. If any grave matter were 

 affected by a dubious point in forest law, the 

 Justice in Eyre could refer the business to the 

 Court of King's Bench at Westminster, and his 

 proceedings could only be removed, or any mis- 

 carriage of justice rectified and redressed, by writ 

 of error into the same high court. 



Here also, at the Justice Seat^ such inhabitants 



