HislorTj of New Forest. 
331 
tion now going on is an irretrievable mistake, however well 
meant. 
VII. " Brief History of the New Forest, and description 
OF ANV PECULIAR CUSTOMS CONNECTED WITH IT." * 
This, as well as the other royal forests, was in its origin partly 
demesne and partly prerogative. 
Demesne, as being the king's private property, in which not 
only the vert (small wood and brushwood, shelter for deer) and 
venison, but also the soil and the timber belonged to him. These 
may have been the original lands of the Saxon heptarchs, and so, 
on the consolidation of the heptarchy, they may have been vested 
in the English monarch. But, however acquired, we find that 
at the time of the compilation of Domesday-book (twenty years 
after the Conquest) the Norman monarch was actually possessed 
of large tracts of woods and wastes of " ancient demesne 
which are generally interpreted to mean lands which belonged 
to Edward the Confessor, and probably to his predecessors. 
Prerogative, as being the property of private persons, to whom 
the soil and timber belonged, while the rights of vert and 
venison belonged to the king, who claimed by his prerogative 
the privilege of afforesting other men's lands, Avith a sole right 
to the deer there and to the small wood and covert for their 
sustenance and shelter. The exercise of this prerogative, however 
oppressive we may deem it, was probably a commutation of that 
authority over, and ownership in, the best fish of the sea and 
beasts of the forest, to whomsoever belonging, and wheresoever 
found, and by whosesoever labour taken, which the ancient 
policy of the common law attributed to the king exclusively, 
and a remnant of which we still have in the presentation to the 
sovereign of the first sturgeon caught in the Thames. The right 
of vert and venison were originally, as is supposed, prohibited 
to all people in all places and reserved to the Crown ; so that 
the restriction of the Crown's right to certain lands selected for 
the purpose of afforestation, and the admission of the subjects' 
right on their own gi'ounds in non-prohibited places (which is 
said to have been done by Edward the Confessor), were, in fact, 
relaxations of the royal prerogative and concessions to the sub- 
ject. The universal extent of the king's ownership in all Avild 
* My authorities for the history of the New Forest are the Parliamentary 
Papers, particularly the Land Revenue Commissioners' Report, 1789, the Report 
of the Royal New Forest and Waltham Forest Commission, with the Sub-Report 
of the Secretary, 1850, and the Register of Decisions on Claims to Forest Rights, 
1858. I am also indebted to the Deputy Surveyor, L. H. Cumberbatch, Esq., and 
to the Rev. John Compton of Minstead for valuable information on the present 
state of the Forest. I have for the most part omitted particulars which may be 
found in popular manuals, 
VOL. XXII. 2 A 
