ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 57 
enforced in.England. Large tracts in the south 
covered with a natural growth of trees were 
devastated during the period when Edward I. 
waged war in Scotland ; and John of Gaunt, Duke 
of Lancaster, is said to have employed twenty- 
four thousand men in destroying the forests as 
punishment for an incursion. Before the Stuarts 
ascended the throne of England, Jacobean statutes 
had been promulgated throughout Scotland en- 
joining the formation of plantations of trees; and 
early in his reign James I. of England gave 
attention to the preservation of immature timber 
trees, and issued more than once proclamations 
enjoining the retention of ‘stores’ when the 
underwoods were being felled. In a proclama- 
tion, issued in 1608, he notified that ‘ great spoils 
and devastations are committed within our forests, 
parks, and chases.’ And the royal edict set forth, 
‘we therefore have endeavoured to take course 
to stop the said abuses . . . to the end that our 
care may appear to the preservation and increase 
of timber as well to others as to ourselves . . . 
we do straightly command and charge all our 
loving subjects in general that in their own woods 
they presume not hereafter to defraud the true 
