FORESTRY 



THE earliest authentic account of the woodlands of Bedfordshire will be found in the 

 Domesday Book,^ the extent belonging to each manor being estimated according to 

 the mast or pannage available for the swine. It is only at Luton in the extreme 

 south of the county that there is evidence of any very considerable amount of wood- 

 land ; on that royal manor there was pannage for 2,050 swine. Apparently the 

 next largest wood, sufficient for 1,000 swine, was at Cranfield on the borders of Buckinghamshire. 

 But by far the greater number of the manors surveyed had either mere patches of woodland quite 

 out of proportion to their size or in some cases none at all. For instance, nine out of the twenty- 

 three manors of Nigel de Albengi had no wood entered to their share. William Spech held fourteen 

 manors, and eight of them lacked woodland, though one of the latter, Eyworth, was large enough 

 to have nine ploughs. Thirteen manors fell to Walter the Fleming, and seven of these were 

 destitute of wood ; while Langford, with sixteen ploughs and pasturage for 300 sheep, alForded 

 pannage for only sixteen pigs. Biggleswade Hundred on the Cambridgeshire border was especially 

 bare of timber. The only private park within the shire mentioned in Domesday was that of 

 Hugh de Beauchamp at Stagsden on the western border, set apart for the beasts of venery or red 

 deer {jiarchus ferarum silvatuarum)? 



It would be unsafe to draw any definite conclusions from the silence of Domesday on the 

 subject, but it is probable that at the time of its compilation the area in Bedfordshire affected by the 

 harassing forest laws did not extend beyond the hunting reserves of the royal demesne.' The 

 successors of the Conqueror, however, and especially Henry I, soon recognized the financial possi- 

 bilities involved in wider afforestation, and it is certain that the extension of the forest laws to lands 

 outside the royal manors was prompted rather by need of revenue than mere solicitude for sport. 

 Unfortunately only one fragment of the Pipe Rolls of Henry I remains to us, and but for the casual 

 notices of a later time, and the evidence of a few charters, we have scant material for the detailed 

 history of the administration of the forest law between 1086 and 1168. The main outlines, how- 

 ever, are sufficiently clear ; in most of the counties in which royal hunting-reserves had existed in 

 1086, enormous extensions, sometimes involving almost the entire area of the shire, were made by 

 Henry I ; these again had sometimes been allowed to lapse under Stephen, and were only revived 

 when Henry II was firmly seated on the throne. 



As regards Bedfordshire, entries on Pipe Rolls* of Richard I inform us that Henry I had 

 afforested part of the county, and a further entry on a Pipe Roll ' of John may possibly suggest that 

 the part affected lay south of the Ouse.° This we should naturally expect, as extensions of the 

 forest area often started from the nucleus afforded by some royal demesne, and in Bedfordshire 

 the royal manors lay in a group along the southern border of the county. If the lost Pipe Rolls 

 of Henry I were forthcoming, we might expect to meet with occasional entries of fines for 

 offences within the Bedfordshire forest ; in the extant roll of 1 1 30 one only occurs that can 

 probably be assigned to Bedfordshire. 'Payn de Braose accounts for 100 marks of silver for his 

 men who were charged in respect to the boars of the king.' 



1 V.C.H. Bed!, i. 



' For the distinction between the beasts of venery and the beasts of the chase, see Cox, Royal Forests, 62, 



63 and c. iv. 



' In this connexion may be noted the render of hound-money at Luton, Leighton, and Houghton. 



* A''. 2, 3 and 4 Beds and Bucks. ' A°. I. 



° This is a tentative explanation of the reference to the knights who were fined for hunting * in Bedefordscir 

 citra aquam.' The name Ouse does not occur on the Pipe Roll. 



143 



