A HISTORY OF SURREY 



Parks and Chases belonging to his Majesty,' the summary of which 

 shows the following details for Surrey : — ^ 



Forrests 

 Parkes 



Nombre Value 



Tymber Trees . . 6,157 . . ,^2.73° H 3 



Decaying Trees . . 5*083 . 



Tjmber Trees . . 2,488 . 



Decaying Trees . . 3,367 . 



Coppices, acres . . 38 • 



1.939 5 8 



1,157 19 8 



1,082 13 5 



316 o per annum 



From this it must be concluded that parts of the county were then 

 still considered by the forest officials to pertain to the forests ; and, judging 

 from the evidence of MSS. of that period'' the old Surrey bailiwick was 

 still commonly reputed and referred to as forming part of Windsor Forest 

 in place of being merely a purlieu. 



Charles I. tried to revive the abuses of afforestation in Surrey as 

 well as in other counties. The Attorney-General, Noy, produced the 

 records of Justice Seats or High Courts of the Forest for part of Windsor 

 Forest lying in Surrey, held in the reigns of Edward III., Henry VIII. 

 and Queen Elizabeth, and gave it as his opinion that the bailiwick of 

 Surrey was still forest and not merely a purlieu of Windsor Forest. The 

 Earl of Holland was accordingly made to hold a Justice Seat at Bagshot 

 in September 1632 ; and in 1634 and 1636, in his capacity of chief 

 justice in eyre of the forests south of Trent, he granted licenses to fell 

 coppice in the parish of Worplesdon, and to till land near Guildown, as 

 being in the forest of Windsor. But this tendency was peremptorily 

 checked by the Act for the Limitation of Forests in 1 640, when the angry 

 Commons determined that the boundaries of the royal forests should 

 henceforth be only such as they were in the twentieth year of the reign 

 of James I. (1622). A writ of inquiry being issued in 1 641, it was on 

 7 January, 1642, determined that the only portion of the county of 

 Surrey which could be regarded as belonging to the forest of Windsor 

 was Guildford Park ; and as in the royal grant of this park to the Earl 

 of Annandale on 31 March 1630, it was expressly declared to be 'out 

 of the bounds of any royal Forest or Chace whatsoever,' it was (under 

 one of the clauses of the Act of 1640) effisctually disafforested. Guild- 

 ford Park had been disafforested by the king, and consequently no part 

 whatsoever of the county was forest any longer. 



As compared with the adjoining counties Surrey was but little 

 burdened and oppressed by the forest laws. It only felt them, in fact, 

 during the sixteenth and the earlier part of the seventeenth centuries, 

 owing to the assumption that the country west of the Wey and north 

 of the Hog's Back was forest, and not only a purlieu of the forest. 



At one time the acts or omissions constituting offences against the 

 forest laws were almost innumerable, but such as are of chief interest here 

 are those which concerned the woodlands. The three greatest offences 



1 Eleventh Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the State and Condition of th, Woods, 

 Fcrests and Land Revenues of the Croum (1792), appendix No. 3, p. 4'. 

 ' Such as the ' Loseley Papers,' 



n68 



