ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 25 
trative of royal procedure in those early days, that 
this ordinance was put forward as invalidating all 
previous grants unless renewed on payment. 
Then again the barons had to make a firm stand 
against the tendency to encroachment shown by 
the king, who had once more afforested lands that 
had been disafforested by perambulation, and had 
also made warrens in tracts disafforested by charter. 
The most famous and valuable charter of 
liberty in this respect was, however, the cele- 
brated Charta de Foresta. of 1225, granted in the 
ninth year of the reign of Henry III., when he 
was still only eighteen years of age and under 
regency ; and perhaps the most important portion 
of it was contained in the opening words of the 
tenth section, ‘ No man from henceforth shall lose 
neither Life nor Member for killing our Deer.’ 
From the time when William I. caused the 
so-called laws of Canute to be forged down to 
the Forest Charter of 1217, the kings had claimed 
the right of forming a royal forest wherever they 
liked. ‘What I wish, I will have,’ was the law 
in practice. The king merely issued a commis- 
sion under his great seal, setting forth that his 
royal pleasure was to make a forest in any given 
