38 



Savernake Forest. 



The real key to much of forest history, the one principle which 

 lay at the root of much of forest legislation, was the peace and 

 safety of the King's game. Anything that interfered in the 

 slightest degree with that was punishable. It was therefore ne- 

 cessary to watch that nobody felled or destroyed the thickets of the 

 coverts, to turn them into cultivated land. This was called assarting, 

 from an old French word " essarter," to grub up. It could only be 

 done by special leave : and such lands are afterwards called assart 

 lands. 



There was another mode of intrusion on the peace and rest of the 

 King's beasts, by introducing civilized men and their habitations, by 

 building new houses, establishing trades, and in short bringing to- 

 gether and settling people and their works that were not there 

 before. This was a fatal interruption to the comfort of the game. 

 The regarder of the forest, whose duty it was to report these 

 abominations, was particularly charged to keep an eye upon new 

 comers and their business, especially dealers in leather, tanners, 

 glove makers, and the like. None of these gentry were to be 

 allowed, if possible, to settle anywhere within or near the precincts. 



The sketch I have now given of forests in general, their nature 

 and customs, helps to explain how it came to pass that these royal 

 hunting districts were enlarged from time to time. At the first 

 they were acquiesced in by the people, so long as they were not 

 excessive in size, and subjects also could enjoy hunting on their own 

 lands within the bounds. But the Norman Kings assumed the 

 right of extending forest bounds as far as they pleased. They did 

 not deprive people of their lands, but they made those lands subject 

 to Royal and arbitrary control, to an extent that was most vexatious 



to he offered at the high altar in St. Paul's by Sir William and his family. 

 The carcases were received at the steps of the choir by the Canons of St. Paul's, 

 attired in their sacred vestments and wearing garlands of flowers on their heads. 

 Camden himself, when a boy, saw the horns of a buck on a spear carried round 

 about within the Church with great pomp and blowing of horns ! He observes 

 that as there was said by some to have been a Temple of Diana on the site in 

 Roman times, the custom may have been a relic of Paganism, of which it 

 certainly savoured more than it did of Christianity. (G-ough's Camden, Brit., 

 vol. ii., p. 81.) 



