332 
Farming of Hampsliire. 
beasts and game, and of liis claim to all woods and woody places 
for their abode, and of keeping open wastes for the indulgence 
of his own pastime in hunting therein, appears in the derivation 
of the word forest, which is, in fact, the Saxon word Forst or 
Fnrst, i. c. Prince. Every forest was the prince's : to whomso- 
ever the soil and timber might belong, the vert and venison were 
his ; a claim to which, even now, the legal dictum bears testi- 
mony, that only the sovereign can hold a ioxe^t— qua forest^ — 
at law, and that a forest in the hands of a subject becomes a 
chace only. 
The bearing of this distinction between demesne and pre?'Offative 
forest is direct on the history of the New Forest, for it was com- 
posed of both. Edward the Confessor had a demesne there, 
which is mentioned by several writers under the name of Ytene. 
This the Conqueror enlarged by his prerogative,* gave it the 
existing name of the New" Forest, and described it in that remark- 
able cadastre, Domesday-Book, for its age the most wonderful 
report (but not the first, for it continually refers to a survey in 
the time of Edward the Confessor) on the agnculture of a whole 
kingdom Avhich England or even Europe ever saw. 
The extent of his addition, by means of afforestation, to the 
ancient demesne of the Crown cannot now be ascertained, owing 
to the difficulty of assigning any certain numbers in acres to tire 
land measurements of the Conqueror's commissioners ; e. ff. <i 
hide has been held to be any number of acres between 60 and 
120. We are, however, able to state the extent of the New Forest 
A.D. 1279. The barons at Runnymede had obtained some 
articles in mitigation of the royal afforestations. These, with 
some others, were comprehended in the " Charta de Foresta " of 
the ninth year of Henry III. But little was actually done for 
the relief of the subject till Edward I. (as tenacious as any of 
his predecessors, but with enlarged views of foreign conquest, 
"which required for their realisation the money, and so the good- 
will, of his subjects) took the matter in hand as a popular mea- 
sure. He first appointed in the above year, the seventh of his 
reign, commissioners to perambulate and record the then existing 
boundaries of the New Forest. 
The return of the commissioners (the earliest known attempt 
separately to ascertain the limits of any forest by record) is pre- 
served, and assigns to the New Forest as its boundaries the 
Southampton Water, the sea, the river Avon, and on the north a 
* The Nornian kings also preserved highly. Whether they destroyed churches 
and villages may -well be questioned. Tlie report of their devastations comes from 
a source naturally prejudiced. All remains of habitations in the Forest are singu- 
larly preserved, and none have ever been found to bear evidence in favour of the 
Conqueror's depopulations. 
