OF THE FOREST LAWS. 26 1 



ties, and, with savage delight, to have rioted amidst the misery 

 and desolation of the unfortunate English. 



On this subject, Blackstone observes, "Another violent altera- 

 tion of the English constitution consisted in the depopulation of 

 whole counties, for the purpose of the king's royal diversion ; 

 and subjecting both them, and all the ancient forests of the king- 

 dom, to the unreasonable severities of forest laws imported from 

 the continent, whereby the slaughter of a beast was made almost 

 as penal as the death of a man. In the Saxon times, though 

 no man was allowed to kill or chase the king's deer, yet he might 

 start any game, pursue, and kill it, upon his own estate. But 

 the rigour of these new constitutions vested the sole property of 

 all the game in England in the king alone ; and no man was 

 entitled to disturb any fowl of the air, or any beast of the field, 

 of such kinds as were specially reserved for the royal amusement 

 of the sovereign, without express license from the king, by a 

 grant of a chase or free- warren : and those franchises were 

 granted as much with a view to preserve the breed of animals, 

 as to indulge the subject. From a similar principle to which, 

 though the forest laws are now mitigated, and by degrees grown 

 entirely obsolete, yet from this root has sprung a bastard slip, 

 known by the name of the Game Law, now arrived to and wan- 

 toning in its highest vigour : both founded upon the same un- 

 reasonable notions of permanent property in wild creatures ; 

 both productive of the same tyranny to the commons : but with 

 this difference, that the forest laws established only one mighty 

 hunter throughout the land, the game laws have raised a little 

 Nirnrod in every manor. And in one respect the ancient law 

 was much less unreasonable than the modern : for the king's 

 grantee of a chase or free warren might kill game in every part 

 of his franchise ; but now, though a freeholder of less than 

 . 100 a year, is forbidden to kill a partridge upon his own estate, 

 yet nobody else (not even the lord of a manor, unless he hath a, 



