334 
Farming of Hampshire. 
that previously to James l.'s reign there were but three assart 
properties in the Forest,* and these do not seem to have been 
perfectly enclosed. But that king, with his usual facility^ 
made twenty more such grants of assart lands ; but still up to 
the middle of the last century there were but few enclosures.. 
Then, however, the landowners within the Forest began not 
only to enclose their own lands, unenclosed for centuries, but 
also to encroach on and enclose the demesne lands of the Crown. 
Hence the legislation in 1800. The verderers, master-keepers,, 
and other officers of the Forest, who ought to have taken notice 
of and abated these unlawful enclosures, were themselves gene- 
rally local proprietors, and so busily employed on their own, 
behalf as to be hardly able to interfere with those who were only 
following the example of their betters. The effect was doubly 
injurious to the forestal rights of the Crown : first, in the reduc- 
tion of the area of feed for the royal deer, which may be put at 
from 4 to 3 : next, in the claims of the landowners, who, after 
enclosing the lands, demanded for themselves and their tenants 
(thus multiplied by the enclosures) a right to turn out their stock 
(increased five-fold), horses, cattle, and swine, to share with the 
royal deer in the reduced extent of pasture. No wonder the deer 
were starved out by a surcharge of cattle on a diminished area. 
The practice of government and the administration of law in 
the forests appear, in Saxon and early Norman times, to have been 
based on the theory, that they were places out of the kingdom, as 
it were, subject to no other law than the arbitrary will of the 
monarch. Gradually the judicial system for the administration 
of forest law appears to have resolved itself into three tribunals, 
somewhat corresponding in their action to the several functions 
of our ordinary magistrate or justice of the peace, jury, and 
judge. The duty of the first — called originally the Court of 
Woodmote, but of late, from the nature of the business there 
transacted, the Court of Attachments, and again, from the times 
at which it ought to be held, the Forty-day Court — was to receive 
the attachments of the foresters, and enrol them in the rolls of 
the verderers who attended this court. This preliminary stei> 
was in its nature a committal. The duty of the second, called 
the Court of Swainmote (i. c. the meeting of the swains or free- 
holders), was to receive the presentments enrolled in the court 
below, and to proceed to trial and conviction thereon, as a jury 
does, but without any power of giving judgment and of fining 
or otherwise punishing. This power belonged solely to the 
third and supreme tribunal, which was that of the Chief Justice 
* " Assart lands," agri exarati, eitlier with or without leave. To assart lands 
without special licence was an offence against Forest Law. 
