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



31 



Laws " : — " A certain territory of woody grounds and fruitful pas- 

 tures, privileged for wild beasts and fowls of forest, chase, or warren 

 to rest and abide in the safe protection of the King, for his princely 

 delight and pleasure; which territory, so privileged, is meered and 

 bounded with unremoveable marks, meers and boundaries, either 

 known as matter of record, or else by prescription. And also re- 

 plenished with wild beasts, and with great coverts for the succour 

 of the said wild beasts to have their abode in ; and for the pi e- 

 sorvation of such place there are certain laws, privileges and officers 

 belonging to the same that are only proper unto a forest, and not to 

 any other place. A forest might include open chases, and paled 

 parks or warrens, all belonging to private people ; but being within 

 the limits of the King's forest, the King's game must not be 

 meddled with ; and the whole was subject to the particular code of 

 law called forest law, not made by Parliament, but solely by the 

 King\ If a person happened to- own a chase or park just outside 

 the limits of the King's forest, and he wished to punish poachers, 

 the chace or park had no law of its own, and the owner must use 

 the common law of England, not forest law. Though not actually 

 enclosed, a forest had well-known and ascertained limits. Those 

 limits might be something standing above ground, as a church 

 steeple, or an old oak, an earthen barrow or a burial-mound. Or 

 it might be a river, or a road. So that in fact a forest was a district 

 over which certain rigorous laws extended : somewhat resembling 

 what we should call " The Duke's country," or the " Vale of White 

 Horse country" ; with this difference : the modern master of hounds 

 hunts by the leave and with the full consent of the different owners 

 of the lands : but the Norman King asked no leave. Not only so, 

 but he would not allow the owner of the land to hunt the royal 

 beasts without leave. In truth, unless the owner could show some 

 very ancient right, custom, or prescription, he could not even hunt 

 anything, without license from the Crown. He could not cut down 

 even his own trees when he liked, without a license. I have here 

 an instance, not from your forest, but from another in this county. 

 Among Lord Bath's papers at Longleat there is a letter from the 

 estate bailiff to his master, Sir Thomas Thynn, in 1609 — two 



