FORESTRY 



Conformably to the arrangements then come to the bailiwick of Surrey 

 should have been disafforested, but this does not appear to have been 

 done. As King John died in the following year and was succeeded by 

 the boy king Henry III., with the Earl of Pembroke as regent, things 

 may perhaps have been allowed to drift pending a more satisfactory 

 settlement of the many grievances felt with regard to the royal forests. 



In 1 2 17 a Forest Charter was issued abolishing some of the grossest 

 abuses, decreeing that all afforestations made ' of any other wood than 

 his own demesne ' during the reign of Henry II. should forthwith be 

 disafforested, and in the following year a pourallee or ' perambulation ' 

 was made to determine the true boundaries of such forests as had been 

 formed previous to Henry II.'s reign (1154). These perambulations 

 having been held and the records duly returned, a new Forest Charter 

 was enacted and brought into force on 10 February, 1225, the first 

 clause of which provided for the disafforestation of all woods, except 

 those on royal demesne land, afforested by Henry II. A further 

 perambulation was thereupon ordered, and on 9 May, 1225, a writ was 

 directed to Hugh de Nevill, Brian de Insula and Master H. de Cornhill, 

 constituting them the king's justices in Essex, Surrey and Sussex, for 

 viewing and perambulating the forests in these counties with the assist- 

 ance of the foresters, verderers and twelve lawful knights in each county, 

 in order to determine what should be disafforested and what should 

 remain forest.' 



With regard to Surrey * this meant the disafforestation of all the 

 afforested tracts except the royal park of Guildford, because other por- 

 tions of the then royal demesne lands had meanwhile been alienated, 

 namely Brookwood and Woking to Alan Basset in King Richard's 

 time, and the manor of Stoke, with ' Stockton,' to the Bishop of London 

 in 1204. The abbot and monks of Chertsey granted to the king and 

 his heirs for ever the right of hunting over a certain part of their lands 

 to be considered a portion ' of the royal Forest of Windsor, in the 

 county of Surrey.' But this only included a small tract of about 2 to 3 

 square miles forming the apex at the extreme north-west of the county, 

 and the terms upon which the right of hunting was given could hardly 

 be called an afforestation because there was a special proviso that ' all 

 the lands, woods and tenements included within the boundaries, and all 

 persons residing within the same will be exempt for ever from any 

 Regard of the forest except in so far as concerns the king's hunting.' 



The provisions of such charters appear, however, only to have 

 been observed so long as the king felt himself unable to neglect them. 

 Edward I. tried to extend the Berkshire forest of Windsor into Surrey. 

 Four partisan commissioners were appointed to inquire into the Surrey 

 forests, and in a Justice Seat or High Court of the Forest held at 

 Lambeth in 1279 a suborned jury of twelve freeholders found that the 



' Fisher, i:he Forest of Essex (1887), p. 20. 



' Manwood, op. cit. fol. 135-51, gives many details regarding the disafForestations and reafForesta- 

 tions during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. 



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