50 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS 
bulated. Extortion and oppression by Foresters 
again becoming rife, a further statute was issued 
in 1352, ordaining that ‘No Forester nor keeper 
of Forest or Chase, nor none other Minister, shall 
make or gather Sustenance, nor no other Gather- 
ing of Victuals, nor other thing, by Colour of 
his Office, against any Man’s Will, within their 
Bailiwick nor without, but that which is due of 
ancient Right.’ 
Further concessions were demanded from 
Richard II., but the next legislation only took 
place during the last year of the reign of Edward 
IV. (1483), authorising the cutting and sale of 
woods, and their enclosure for a term of seven 
years, ‘with sufficient Hedges able to keep out 
all manner of Beasts and other Cattle out of the 
same Ground for the Preservation of their young 
Spring.’ In this statute, for the first time in the 
history of England, it is recognised that a subject 
may own a forest.' Hitherto a forest had been 
a royal monopoly; and perhaps the insertion of 
1 The statute begins thus: ‘If any of the King’s subjects, 
having Woods of his own, growing on his own Ground, within 
any Forest, Chase or Purlieu of the same within this realm of 
England, shall cut, or cause to be cut, the same Wood or part 
thereof, by Licence of the King or his Heirs, in his Forests, 
