By the Rev. Canon J. JE. Jackson, F.S.A. 



37 



custom or special grant. As a further precaution it was usual to 

 have the right acknowledged in a formal document, attested by the 

 principal persons of the district. I have brought here for inspection 

 a document of this kind which belongs to the Marquis of Bath's 

 collection ; which, though it relates not to Savernake, but to a forest 

 in Somersetshire, will serve as an illustration of the law that pre- 

 vailed here and in all the King's forests. It is also very curious 

 from its antiquity, being six hundred and twenty-six years old. 

 The Abbot of Glastonbury being, as is well known, master of vast 

 estates, was a Lord Paramount in the West of England. His tenants 

 were called ct The Abbot's Men." This document records the solemn 

 verdict of three separate juries, of very substantial landowners ; also 

 of verderers, regarders and other officers, of the King's forests of 

 Mendip and Selwood, in Somerset ; and Gillingham and Blackmore, 

 in Dorsetshire ; certifying to all the world, that all occupiers of land 

 under the abbot, within the metes and bounds of those forests, are 

 exempt and free from having their hounds maimed in the way I 

 have described. The verdict of each jury is recorded in the upper 

 part of the document. The lower part is cut across into about forty 

 narrow strips, each strip carrying the seal of the several jurymen 

 whose names are given in the upper part. It is dated A.D. 1253, 

 the thirty-eighth year of King Henry III. 1 



1 Among the regulations of the forests (as given by Manwood) one or two 

 sound strange to modem ears. If the King summoned any archbishop, earl, or 

 baron, from the country to Parliament, such peer was at liberty as he passed 

 through any of the King's forests to take a buck, in the view of the forester. If 

 the forester was not at hand, then the wayfarers, after blowing a horn to warn 

 him, might proceed to kill a buck themselves. " So that," said the law, " if an 

 archbishop be caught in the forest red-handed [busy slaughtering a buck] he shall 

 not be arrested because he hath right by the King's leave." 



If a deer was found dead or dying in a forest a regular inquest by four men 

 was held upon the body, to ascertain how he came by his death. The verdict 

 was solemnly registered in the warden's forest court, and the flesh, if not un- 

 wholesome, was given to the nearest spital house or hospital. 



An "Inquisitio post mortem" on an animal's carcase seems ludicrous enough : 

 but the strangest use ever made of one is mentioned by Camden, In 1275 (3 

 Edward I.) a Sir William Debaud, of Essex, held land of the Dean and Canons 

 of St. Paul's, in London, by the custom of presenting a doe on the Feast of the 

 Conversion of St. Paul : and a fat buck on the commemoration of the same saint, 



