12 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS 
enough, or politic enough, to bestow it. Thus, 
while under the Saxon kings there had been two 
chases, the higher being reserved for the king, 
and the lower enjoyed by the landholder, the 
Normans at once seized and kept to themselves 
all the pursuit of game. 
In Anglo-Saxon times the chief use of the 
woodlands, except for hunting, fuel, and wood 
for building, was for the pannage of pigs. Large 
herds of swine were driven into the woods to 
fatten on the mast of the beech-tree and the 
acorns of the oak-groves. Before the end of the 
seventh century (King Ine’s laws, a.p. 690) the 
value of a tree was estimated by the number of 
swine that could find shelter under it, and penal- 
ties were imposed on the burning of trees lest 
the woods should be destroyed by fire. Under 
Canute’s supposititious laws the fine for destroy- 
ing a holly-tree, or other tree whose fruit the 
beasts ate, was twenty shillings, besides other 
forfeiture, and even the cutting of brushwood 
within the royal forests was forbidden. In 
Domesday Book land is often described as being 
a ‘wood of so many pigs.’ 
At the time of the Conquest the forests or 
