160 THE NEW FOREST 



This is a right, attaching to certain defined houses 

 in and around the Forest, to have, free of any 

 payment, a certain number of loads of fuel wood 

 annually " from the open and unenclosed wastes 

 of the Forest" that is to say, from these very 

 encoppicements of mature age of which I have 

 been writing. 



About 100 years ago these claims amounted to 

 over 840 loads annually, but at that date the 

 Crown set itself to reduce this impost on the 

 best part of the Forest in real earnest. 



All allowances of fuel made to the lodges of 

 master keepers, groom-keepers, and all other 

 forest officers were commuted or extinguished as 

 the appointments fell in. All the rights attach- 

 ing to the then very numerous copyholds of 

 the Manor of Lyndhurst were also extinguished 

 as the lives fell in. And the Crown kept a 

 market open from that date until now to purchase 

 at full market value at any time all rights of this 

 nature that the owner would sell. In these ways 

 the number of the rights fell from 840 loads to 

 about 370 at the time when I came to the Forest, 

 and they have since been bought out whenever 

 opportunity arose ; they stand somewhere about 

 240 loads at the present day. It is very desirable 

 that they should be wholly wiped out. 



From the earliest days the exercise of this 



