ANCIENT FOREST LAWS. 291 



formerly infested the woods, were nearly extermi- 

 nated in King Edgar's time, when that monarch 

 prohibited the killing of deer and game in his 

 woods. The punishment depended upon the will 

 of the king, until the celebrated forest laws of 

 Canute, which defined the rights and privileges of 

 the monarch and others ; but those laws were little 

 regarded by succeeding kings, whose arbitrary will 

 afterwards regulated the laws of the forest. " Be- 

 sides other prerogatives of the Saxon kings," says 

 Selden, " they had a franchise for wild beasts 

 for the chase, which we commonly call forest, 

 being a precinct of ground, neither parcel of the 

 county, nor the diocess, nor the kingdom, but 

 rather appendant thereto. 11 And these preroga- 

 tives, he quaintly observes, were maintained, " that 

 the world might see the happiness of England, 

 where beasts enjoy their liberty as well as men." 

 Another old writer says, that " the Saxon Kings 

 and the Danish King Canute made no new Forests, 

 but were contented with the Woods that were 

 their own Demesnes, and were never granted to, 

 or possessed by the Subject ; but the kings of the 

 Norman Race, not being satisfied with sixty-eight 

 old Demesne Woods or Forests, depopulated well- 

 built Towns and Villages, to make to themselves 

 Places appropriated to their own Diversion only. 

 William the Conqueror laid waste thirty-six Towns 

 in Hampshire to make a Forest, which still retains 

 the Name of the New Forest ; and his Forest Offi- 

 cers exercised such arbitrary Rule, as to abridge 

 even the great Barons of the Privileges they en- 



