232 Agricultural Capabilities of the New Forest. 
ixirposes entirely foreign to those to wliich alone tliey owe their origin. 
Amongst these powers of the Crown over the property of a subject within a 
forest, I will take one as an example to which I must presently refer in my 
endeavour to trace the legal history of the Forest up to its present time. This 
is ' fence-month.' Shortly, this means that the Sovereign had power, if he 
pleased, to prevent all men (possibly all cattle also) being in the forest during 
the four weeks in June and July, at which time the deer were fawning. It 
may be taken as regards the New Forest, that it came to be considered that 
the Crown had the power of clearing the Forest of all cattle in that month ; 
but, at the same time, there is no instance on record of its being put in force 
within the New Forest for a very long number of years, if ever. The case, 
then, of the New Forest, immediately on aftbrestation, was this. The relative 
rights of the Crown and of suVijects over its soil were materially altered, greatly 
to the detriment of the latter ; but it is to be by no means inferred that this 
last stroke was ijermancnt, or that the original position was utterly destroyed. 
On the contrary, the Sovereign could disafforest, as well as afforest ; and upon 
this taking place, that first condition of things revived which had only been 
put in abeyance by the imposition of forest laws. Of this there are plenty of 
examples when, as liberty began to.dawn, Sovereigns were compielled to narrow 
the limits of the forests which they had wantoidy constituted over various 
parts of the kingdom. I have said that lords of the soil over which common 
rights extended, had no power to interfere with the pasturage of their tenants, 
certainly, therefore, no power to enclose the open lands ; but what they could 
not get by common law it was open for them to obtain, if they could, by 
statute. Thus, in the reign of William III., an act was passed to enable the 
Crown by degrees to enclose, for growing timber, 6000 acres of this forest. It 
seems to have been a wise and just measure. Originally, doubtless, the forest 
had been rich in timber, oak and beech, and from it the Crown had been 
accustomed to draw the requisite supply for the Royal Dockyards ; but in the 
lawless times which just preceded the date of this statute the forests of Eng- 
land had become the easy prey of land-pirates, who had cleared the old woods 
of almost all that was valuable in them. The Crown was thus robbed of its 
property; and the Commoners, if they gained a somewhat more open space for 
grazing their cattle, lost what was then to them a particularly valuable right 
— the pannage of their swine on the acorns and the beech-mast of these ancient 
woodlands.- This statute, therefore, especially provided that plantations should 
be made for the sole purpose of restoring this devastation and supplying timber 
to the Royal Navy, and made it a condition that the lands should be taken in 
such places as woidd least inconvenience or damage the Commoners of the 
forest. It gave, too, a further power of making plantations with the like pur- 
pose and condition to the extent of 6000 acres more, when the plantations first 
made should again be flung open to the cattle. The property of the Commoners 
in the Forest was thus carefullv asserted and coniirmed, and in a separate 
section the time of ' fence-month ' was mentioned as a forestal exception to 
the ordinary exercise of their rights of pasturage. Who these Commoners were, 
and what lands had rights attached to them, was not then mere matter of con- 
jecture, for within thirty years a very ample register of claims had been made 
under a Commission from Charles II., which register has been lately translated 
from the Latin, and jirinted and published by the Office of Woods. If the 
Commoners had no reason to complain ot the tendency of this Act of 
William III., they had still less cause for complaint with regard to the 
execution of its provisions. Up to 1808, little over 3000 acres had been 
taken from the open lands and planted, but a Royal Commission having 
been appointed at the end of the eighteenth century to report generally 
on the Koyal Forests, public attention was drawn to the fact of their gross 
mismanagement. Any one desiring to know what the result of Crown manage- 
