52, OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS 
After the Restoration, Charles II. tried to renew 
them, in form at any rate, but the only [ver seems 
to have been that made by Vere, Earl of Oxford, 
in 1670. 
The effect of Edward IV.’s statute of 1483 
seems to have been to give a great impulse to 
the wastage and destruction of woodlands, and 
to the clearance of wooded tracts for agricultural 
and pastural purposes. That this was so seems 
clear from what Holinshed says in his Description 
of England: ‘1 might here take occasion,’ he 
says in the chapter Of Woods and Marishes, ‘to 
speake of the great sales yeirlie made of wood, 
whereby an infinit quantitie hath bin destroied 
within these few yeers: but I give over to travell 
in this behalfe. Howbeit thus much I dare 
afirme, that if woods go so fast to decaie in the 
next hundred yeere of Grace, as they have done 
and are like to doo in this, sometimes for increase 
of sheepwalks, and some maintenance of prodi- 
galitie and pompe.. . it is to be feared that 
the fennie bote, broome, turffe, gall, heath, firze, 
brakes, whinnes, ling, dies, hassacks, flags, straw, 
sedge, reed, rush, and also seacole will be good 
merchandize even in the citie of London, where- 
