32, OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS 
give judgment or assess any fines. The jury 
empanelled before the Fustice Seat consisted of 
eighteen, twenty, or twenty-four men chosen from 
among the freeholders and others present. Here, 
too, all manner of offences were adjudicated on, 
from offences against vert and venison, or ex- 
tortions by the forest officers, down to mis- 
behaviour and abusive words. One Sir Charles 
Howard was even fined one hundred pounds, and 
was committed until he paid them, for saying that 
proceedings had been carried against him with a 
high hand in respect of certain trees he had 
felled, and that he would have the matter heard 
in another place. 
Forty days’ notice had to be given before the 
Fustice Seat was held in every third year. Being 
a Court of Record, it could adjudge both fine 
and imprisonment. If any grave matter were 
affected by a dubious point in forest law, the 
Justice in Eyre could refer the business to the 
Court of King’s Bench at Westminster, and his 
proceedings could only be removed, or any mis- 
carriage of justice rectified and redressed, by writ 
of error into the same high court. 
Here also, at the Justice Seat, such inhabitants 
