ROYAL HUNTING-GROUNDS 17 



firs, Sitka spruce and Japanese larch, etc., in the 

 nineteenth century. 



From early times after the departure of the 

 Romans the forests in England were utiHsed by the 

 King and his nobles for purposes of sport and the 

 chase, and by the peasants for grazing and pannage 

 purposes — i.e. for feeding their large herds of swine 

 on the acorns and beech mast when it covered the 

 forest floor in the autumn. Large tracts of country 

 were reserved as Royal hunting-grounds, these areas 

 consisting of blocks of country which included agri- 

 cultural land, waste lands, as well as forest. Within 

 the Royal hunting-grounds only the King and his 

 nobles were allowed to hunt, and penalties were 

 enacted to safeguard the animals of the chase — the 

 red deer and so on. But neither the Saxons nor the 

 Danes pressed hard upon the people in the reserva- 

 tions made in this fashion for the chase. It was 

 after the Norman conquest, by which time the 

 forest area, under the persistent attack kept up on 

 it to provide more land for tillage and for the 

 increasing towns, was beginning to show some 

 contraction, that real hardship was suffered by the 

 rural population. WilUam the Conqueror and 

 several of his descendants were passionately fond 

 of the chase of the " tall Red Deer." William I. 

 took over the Royal hunting-domains of his Saxon 

 predecessors. Within a brief interval he became 

 alarmed at the rate the forest lands were being 

 disforested, and to prevent this he extended the 

 boimdaries of the hunting-grounds of the Saxon 

 Kings and called them Royal forests, aU such lands 



