FOREST ADMINISTRATION. 33 



repression were, to say the least, severe. The sentence 

 required all the officers and officials of Moulifere to demit 

 their offices with little delay ; it declared them " incapable 

 of holding any office or discharging any function in the 

 forests of His Majesty." One of them called Boisson, sur- 

 named Labrosse, an official of a contractor, was "condemned 

 to do penance in his shirt — head and feet bare, — a rope 

 round his neck, followed by the public executioner, and 

 holding in his hand a torch, two pounds in weight, before 

 the gate and principal entry of the Palais Royal of the city 

 of Poictiers, and to be banished for ever from the county 

 of Poictou and Guyenne." Sales made from the year 1635 

 were declared null, and the total of the pecuniary penalties 

 amounted to the enormous sum, especially for that period, 

 of 275,000 livres, of which about 9000 had to be paid in 

 the form of alms. 



'The sentences against the forest officers and their 

 subordinates were based on the ground that they had 

 "presumptuously, fraudulently, and wickedly committed 

 and permitted all the malversations and wastes which had 

 occasioned the ruin of the forests of His Majesty ;" and on 

 the ground that they had " sold the wood of the king, and 

 received the money, . . . erased, altered, and added 

 to the minutes of sale, and with a bad intention left many 

 blanks in the deeds and papers; . . . consumed the 

 wood on their lime-kilns and brick-kilns within the heart 

 of the forest ; . . . illegally received taxes, fees, and 

 firewood." The other persons condemned were treated as 

 their accomplices in " the frauds and monopolies," or per- 

 petrators of the misdemeanours, and of the robberies 

 committed on the property of the king. 



' The commissioner for the reformation of the forest, after 

 having pronounced these sentences, completed his mission 

 by the preparation of a report, now of no great interest, on 

 the measures to be adopted to restore the forest woods of 

 Moulifere ; and he caused to be printed (1667) a collection 

 of these works, which was published at Poictiers by " John 

 Fleurian, printer and bookseller in ordinary to the king 



D 



