ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 35 
presture, Waste, and Assart. Purprestre, from the 
old French Pourpris, ‘a taking for oneself, and 
enclosing,’ was trespass or wrongful encroach- 
ment by enclosure or usage. Anything in the 
shape of building, enclosure, or exercising any 
liberty or privilege without special warrant to 
do so was, as Manwood, the great historian of 
old English forest laws, says, a grave offence, for 
‘the Law indendeth a very grievous Fine should 
be set on him who makes a Purprestre on the 
king’s lands.” A man might not even build 
a dwelling-house for himself on his own free 
land within the forest unless he had previously 
obtained the requisite special license. Waste 
included everything done in the forest which 
tended to damage or destroy the coverts and 
pastures for the deer and other game. A free- 
holder within the forest could not even cut down 
any thick covert, or fell trees in his own woods, 
without either obtaining a license from the Chief 
Justice in Eyre, or else performing the act in view 
of the king’s forester. Even ploughing a meadow 
without previous permission was ‘waste’; and 
he who committed waste was fined by the Chief 
Justice, the place wasted being seized for the 
