52 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS 



After the Restoration, Charles II. tried to renew 

 them, in form at any rate, but the only Iter seems 

 to have been that made by Vere, Earl of Oxford, 

 in 1670. 



The effect of Edward IV.'s statute of 1483 

 seems to have been to give a great impulse to 

 the wastage and destruction of woodlands, and 

 to the clearance of wooded tracts for agricultural 

 and pastural purposes. That this was so seems 

 clear from what Holinshed says in his Description 

 of England : ' I might here take occasion/ he 

 says in the chapter Of Woods and Marishes, 'to 

 speake of the great sales yeirlie made of wood, 

 whereby an infinit quantitie hath bin destroied 

 within these few yeers : but I give over to travell 

 in this behalfe. Howbeit thus much I dare 

 affirme, that if woods go so fast to decaie in the 

 next hundred yeere of Grace, as they have done 

 and are like to doo in this, sometimes for increase 

 of sheepwalks, and some maintenance of prodi- 

 galitie and pompe ... it is to be feared that 

 the fennie bote, broome, turffe, gall, heath, firze, 

 brakes, whinnes, ling, dies, hassacks, flags, straw, 

 sedge, reed, rush, and also seacole will be good 

 merchandize even in the citie of London, where- 



