FORESTRY 



verge and vicinage they also made their ' perambulations.' At the eyres a great variety of matters 

 came under view, offences against forest laws and customs, encroachments on the king's soil or 

 rights, poaching, felling and selling of timber, and much besides. 



So much business accumulated during the lengthy intervals of the ' eyres ' that to serve on the 

 juries of the forest eyres and other legal obligations therewith connected, to which all were liable, 

 was a hardship well worth escaping at a price. And so we find, for instance, that in 1207 'the 

 barons, knights, and free-tenants in the Rape of Hastings ' combined to purchase with a palfrey and 

 the sum of 60 marks exemption from the summons of the foresters when the justices should come 

 into Sussex to hold their ' Pleas of the Forest.' 16 



Strictly speaking, a forest could belong to none but the king, and if he granted one to a subject 

 it devolved into a ' chase.' The difference between forest and chase in addition to that of possession, 

 was that though the latter was an extensive track of woody ground, without fence or pale, very 

 similar in natural features to a forest, pleas of the forest were not as a rule held thereon by the king's 

 justices, though lesser courts, as the swainmote for example, often continued. A park differed from 

 forest and chase in being inclosed with hedge and ditch, fence and pale. Parks were often made 

 for special purposes within the metes of a forest or chase. Such are the main characteristics of the 

 three varieties of what may be called sporting grounds or lands. It must be confessed that much of the 

 legal nomenclature attached to matters of park, chase, and forest was used in a very loose manner, so 

 that, particularly it appears in Sussex, chases are called forests, parks advanced to chases, and forests 

 degraded to them ; and even parks are sometimes denominated forests. 17 



The same inaccuracies occurred in relation to the courts, leading in time to irregularity of 

 proceedings, so that, for instance, we find such extraneous matters as pleas of debt among the 

 business constantly transacted at such a strictly woodland court as a pannage court. 



As regards the forests of Sussex it would not be difficult to enumerate a dozen so-called, and, 

 indeed, it is by no means certain whether the number six, to which a stricter nomenclature reduces 

 them, is not in excess of those technically and legally existing at any time. It is commonly received 

 that the six rapes of Sussex each possessed a castle, a river, a port, and a forest. Spelman in his list 

 of ' English Forests,' also assigns six to Sussex ; and Speed inserts the same number in his map of 

 this county, in the early part of the reign of James I, namely, Arundel, Ashdown, Dallington, St. 

 Leonard's, Waterdown, and Worth. 



Passing from the west eastwards Chichester rape had the so-called forest of St'anstead and part 

 of Arundel. Arundel's forest bore the name of the rape ; Bramber rape had St. Leonard's Forest ; 

 the rape of Lewes contained the forest of Worth ; Pevensey rape possessed Waterdown as well as 

 Ashdown, largest of Sussex forests ; and the rape of Hastings had the forest variously denominated 

 Dallington, Brightling, or Burwash. At the date of Domesday it is possible the bounds of these 

 forests were not every where defined ; portions as they were of the great Andredeswald, some of them, 

 as Waterdown and Ashdown, St. Leonard's and Worth, were probably contiguous woodlands. 



It might have been expected that Domesday would afford much information as to the woods 

 and forests of Sussex. Unfortunately this is not the case, and out of the scores of parks which 

 probably existed in the county, only five are mentioned, and those not by name. Of the woodlands 

 in general throughout Sussex, what pertained to each manor is mentioned in the majority of cases, 

 but its size is nowhere stated, its value in money-rent or in hogs received from the pannage alone 

 being entered. Yet this relates to an aspect of the woodland of no little importance. For in days 

 when neither cabbages nor turnips or similar vegetables were grown to sustain the cattle through 

 the long winter months, and pigs alone could be fed cheaply throughout the year, immense numbers 

 of swine were kept, to supplement the winter food supply largely provided by the flesh of deer and 

 cattle salted down in autumn. Much of the feed of swine was obtained by turning them out into 

 the woodlands to devour the fallen fruit of the beeches and oaks and the coarse herbage of wastes 

 and commons. The word Pannagium 'pannage' (later avesagium) was applied not only to this 

 privilege or practice, but also to the payment made for it ; the usual method being for the swine- 

 owner to render to the lord of the woodland a certain proportion of the hogs that were turned ou- 

 to feed on the acorns and mast. 



It is too often assumed that the modus was one hog out of seven, a proportion explicitly stated 

 in Domesday as applying to the render for herbage. For that record says of Pagham that the render 

 from herbage was ' one hog from every villein who has seven hogs,' while a marginal note adds, 

 ' Similiter per totum Sudsex.' But there is no justification for extending its application to pannage, 

 and indeed that the modus of payment for pannage was different from that for herbage we have the 

 direct evidence of Domesday ; as, for one instance, under Ferring, where it says, ' there is woodland 

 yielding 4 swine,' i.e. from pannage, ' and for herbage i pig of 7.' Moreover a thirteenth-century 



16 Pipe Roll, 8 John. 



" Cf. Knapp, or Knepp in particular, which though always of limited extent, and surrounded with a pale, 

 was often denominated a forest. 



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