A Book of Britain: The Lore, Landscape and Heritage of a Treasured Countryside

Alder was extensively used as piling in the construction of docks, quays and landing stages – Venice was built on alder piles, and during the great era of canal building in the eighteenth century all lock gates were made of alder. It was much sought-after for lightweight, durable clogs worn by workers in the mill towns of Lancashire and the south of Scotland, and was used for cart and spinning wheels, bowls, spoons, wooden heels for shoes, herring-barrel staves and furniture.

Alder wood burns with an intense heat and so made the best charcoal for gunpowder manufacturing. Gunpowder factories were usually sited where there was a natural supply of alder trees; the Royal Gunpowder Mill, established in 1560 at Waltham Abbey in Essex, is an example of this, or the 1694 Chart Gunpowder Mill at Faversham in Kent. The bark was used for tanning, waterproofing fishermen’s nets, curing sore throats and to make a reddish dye. Alder shoots, which appear in early spring, produce a brown dye, the catkins a green one, and in some rural areas the leaves, which have a clammy, glutinous surface, were strewn on the floor in rooms to catch fleas, from Neolithic times until well into the eighteenth century.

ELM

Wood from the common elm has many of the same qualities as alder; it is close-grained, free from knots, tough, flexible, and not prone to splitting. Elm does not crack once seasoned and is remarkably durable underwater, being specially adapted for any purpose which requires exposure to wet. Allowed to grow, it becomes a much more impressive tree than an alder, and can develop into a magnificent specimen, towering to a height of around 36 metres. These beautiful trees, with their haloes of reddish spring flowers and billowing summer foliage, were favourite subjects of the early landscape artists. Constable’s pencil drawing of the elms at Old Hall Park in 1817 captures all the romance, vigour and majesty of a tree that was once a familiar sight silhouetted across England’s skylines.

Tragically, elms are susceptible to a deadly beetle or wind-borne fungus, Graphium ulmus, and no one who was alive in the 1970s could possibly forget the devastation as Dutch Elm Disease ravaged elms across Britain, or the destruction of 20 million trees in an attempt to contain the epidemic. I well remember the year when miles of dead or dying hedgerows, park and city elms stood stark and haggard against the brightening colours of the growing season, giving an impression of both summer and autumn occurring simultaneously.

Elm wood had an enormous number of practical uses; its peculiar toughness and durability underwater made it ideal for keel pieces, bilge planks, jetty piles, groyne and harbour construction, the blocks and dead eyes of ships’ rigging, the bobbins of fish nets, and, since the wood shatters when struck rather than splintering, gun carriages were always made of elm. Because of the extreme toughness and weather-resistant properties, elm boards were largely used for making coffins, lining the interior of carts, wagons or wheelbarrows, and as cladding on houses and farm buildings. The inner bark is very tough and fibrous and was woven into rope or mats and, as with alder, elm wood was used in making water pipes prior to cast iron.

The dense grain of elm has one drawback which made old woodsmen wary of the tree: when the tree is in full leaf, a branch will suddenly, with no warning, snap and come crashing to the ground. This led to the superstition that, “The elm hateth man, and waiteth? Wych elm, or Scotch elm, which grows in northern England, Scotland and Wales and is the only species of elm native to Ireland, is a beautiful tree, smaller, broader and hardier than its southern cousin. It flourishes on hillsides or near the sea and the tree’s ability to establish itself in remote places has enabled pockets of Wych elm to survive Dutch Elm Disease.

The word ‘wych’ came from the Saxon word meaning pliable and refers to the twigs, which can be twisted and knotted without breaking, and the elasticity of the smaller branches – some of the best longbows were made of Wych elm. The wood, though more porous than that of the common elm, is tough, hardy and weather-resistant when properly seasoned, and in the north was used for similar water-based construction as common elm was in the south. The wood becomes very flexible when steamed and was much used in making small clinker-built boats. Wych elm wood is renowned for its great strength and resistance to splitting, due to the interweaving of the wood fibres which creates a cross-grained timber. The ability to resist splitting under great stress made it ideal for wheel-making, the strength of the hub being so critical that wheelwrights sourced elm from particular regions renowned for good wood. Wych elm blocks were used for pulleys, early gunstocks and the headstocks of church bells, stair treads, floorboards, table tops and the seats of chairs.

ASH

Next to oaks, ash trees were probably the most highly prized for their speed of growth and the strength and elasticity of their wood. Ash thrives on fairly damp soils, provided conditions are not too acidic and there is plenty of light. It is widespread across Britain, with ash woodland found on the steep limestone slopes of the Derbyshire Peak District, in Somerset, South Wales and south-western Scotland. In Ireland, the old forests in limestone areas were once a mixed woodland of ash and elm, and although these were cleared long ago, ash is still the most common large tree in Irish lowland hedges.

Ash wood is as tough as oak, does not splinter and is so flexible that a joist of it will bear more weight before it breaks than one of any other tree. It was used – and still is – for any implement handles that required tensile strength and shock-absorbent properties, such as axes, hammers, hoes, brooms, spades or forks. At one time ash was used for bows, arrows and spear hafts, and the name is said to derive from Aesc, the Saxon word for spear. Ash was coppiced for hop poles, ladder struts and for making the finest oars, whilst young ash shoots were used to make walking sticks, hoops, hurdles and crates. The Celtic war chariots were made of ash and, later, ash wood was in demand by cart and carriage makers – in 1901, the Coachbuilders’ Association appealed to the President of the Board of Agriculture to try to stimulate landowners to grow more of this valuable timber. The body frames of early aircraft and railway goods carriages were made of ash, and today the chassis of Morgan sports cars are still made of seasoned ash wood. Skis were once made of ash and it is commonly used for hockey sticks, snooker cues and for the hurley bat used in the popular Irish sport of hurling. ‘The clash of the ash’ is a familiar phrase used by Irish sports journalists and commentators when trying to convey the excitement of a hurling match.

HORNBEAM AND BEECH

Hornbeam is the hardest wood in Europe; the name derives from the Old English ‘Horn’, meaning hard, and ‘Beam?, a tree. It is found among oak and beech woods and is one of the few trees to survive alongside beech trees since it is very tenacious and can tolerate deep shade. Hornbeam makes ideal hedging when cut and layered, properties which were early appreciated, and the original maze at Hampton Court, planted in about 1514 by Cardinal Wolsey, was hornbeam hedging.

Hornbeam timber burns with an intense heat, and because it was too hard for early carpenters to handle it was principally coppiced and pollarded for fuel, particularly in the iron ore mining districts of the south-east. However, as the quality of tools improved, the wood began to be used to yoke pairs of oxen together for ploughing, cogs for the early flour mills, and spokes for wheels. Hornbeam wood is able to resist any amount of heavy blows and so it became commonly used for making butchers’ blocks, mallet heads, balls, skittles and piano hammers.

Hornbeam is frequently mistaken for beech – Nicholas Culpepper referred to it in his Complete Herbal’(1653) as ‘the other rough sort of beech’ – as they share the same habitat and have leaves of a similar shape and verdancy. Common beech is a much finer tree, though, which, when left undisturbed, can grow to forty metres in height. Coppiced beech was used as faggots for firing kilns, since the heating power of beech surpasses that of most other woods, with the timber from standard trees having a variety of appliances for articles where a short dense grain was required, including dairy ware such as churns, bowls and butter tubs. Other uses included panels for carriages, carpenter’s planes, stonemason’s mallets, granary shovels, boot-lasts, clogs and parquet flooring.

Beech bends beautifully and is easily turned, which makes it the ideal material for furniture, particularly chairs. Until the 1970s there were still ‘bodgers’, itinerant wood turners, working in the beech woods of the Chilterns. Bodgers specialised in making chair legs and stretcher poles, the horizontal structural members joining chair legs to prevent them from splaying. Traditionally, a bodger would buy a stand of trees from the woodland owner and set up a camp, consisting of a lean-to known as a ‘bodger’s hovel’, in which to sleep, and a shelter to house his pole lathe, chisels, axes, saws and draw knives. After felling a suitable tree, the bodger would cut it into billets approximately the length of a chair leg and these would then be split with a sledgehammer and wedges, trimmed with a side axe, tidied with the drawknife and turned to shape on the pole lathe. Chair legs and stretchers would be stored in piles until the greenwood had dried and then taken to one of the large chair-making centres, the largest of which was High Wycombe, the centre of the Windsor chair industry.

BEECH WAS EXTENSIVELY USED BY CRAFTSMEN WHO SPECIALISED IN MAKING BOOT AND SHOE TREES. HANDMADE SHOES AND BOOTS ALWAYS HAD A CORRESPONDING SET OF WOODEN TREES, CARVED TO REPLICATE THE SHAPE OF THE FOOT AND LEG AND MAINTAIN THE STRUCTURE OF THE ARTICLE.

In the days when there were dozens of military and civilian boot makers in London and many hundreds in the provinces, beech was extensively used by craftsmen who specialised in making boot and shoe trees. Handmade shoes and boots always had a corresponding set of wooden trees, carved to replicate the shape of the foot and leg and maintain the structure of the article. These were particularly important with riding boots, which soon lose their shape unless remoulded by boot trees after each time they are worn. Sadly, with the escalating cost of handmade boots and shoes, the art of tree making is fast disappearing and only a handful of such craftsmen remain.

As with hornbeam, beech is a common hedging plant and was often planted along the tops of earthbank field boundaries. The most famous and tallest beech hedge in the world is the great hedge of Meikelour, near Blairgowrie, which can be seen beside the A93 between Perth and Blairgowrie. This fantastic living sculpture, which forms part of the boundary of the Meikelour Estate owned by the Marquis of Lansdowne, is over 30 metres high and 530 metres long. It was planted in the autumn of 1745 by Jean Mercer, heiress of Meikleour and Aldie, and her husband Robert Murray Nairne, who was subsequently killed at the Battle of Culloden in 1746, while fighting for the Highland Jacobite cause against Government forces under the Duke of Cumberland. Legend has it that following the death of her husband Jean Mercer would not allow the hedge to be cut, letting it to grow towards the heavens in a tribute to her husband’s memory.

BIRCHES

Our native birches, the silver birch and downy birch, are two of Britain’s most lovely and graceful trees. No highland scene would be complete without these dainty masterpieces of nature growing in broken thickets on rugged hillsides and wild glens, beside thundering waterfalls and raging torrents, mountain tarns and on wind-swept moors.

These silver trees, which thrive on the light, drier soils of the eastern side of the country and the downy birches of the damp western uplands, are beautiful in all seasons. In winter, the twigs of a birch give the impression of a purple mist hanging over the hillside which turns to a glorious haze of yellow and red when the catkins appear in the springtime. The bright freshness of its leaves and their delicate scent are not matched by any other tree, and in summer after rain, when every leaf holds an iridescent crystal at its tip, a birch really becomes the ‘Lady of the Wood’, the name given by the Celts. In autumn the fallen leaves give brightness and a wonderful variety of different colours to the woodland scene and alleviate any feeling of melancholy that trees in the autumn can sometimes provoke.

Hard, heavy, close-grained birch wood made superb charcoal and is among the best of firewoods, burning with a bright, steady flame and a pleasant fragrance. Hams, herrings and haddock smoked over birch twigs or ‘sprays’ acquire a unique flavour from the resinous wood, as did whisky when barrels were made of it. Because of its prevalence and availability in the Highlands, the uses of birch there were many and varied. It was used for all building materials, the handles of agricultural implements and for household items such as bowls, plates and spoons. Cradles were made of birch and there was a thriving cottage industry making hard-wearing bobbins, spools and reels for the Lancashire cotton industry.

The oily bark, which makes the best kindling, was used for tanning leather, and sometimes, when dried, twisted into a rope and soaked in mutton tallow to be used as a substitute for candles. Twigs or sprays were used in thatching, and birch spray, dried through the summer with the leaves on, made an acceptable alternative to heather in a mattress. Besom brooms are still made of birch sprays and the wood is suitable for veneer; birch ply is the strongest and most dimensionally stable plywood used to make skateboards, amongst other things. Birch has a natural resonance that peaks in the high and low frequencies and is the most sought-after wood in the manufacture of speaker cabinets. It is sometimes used as a tone wood for semi-acoustic and acoustic guitars and occasionally for solid-body guitars.

SCOTS PINE

A lone Scots pine tree, bent and twisted by age and ravaged by the weather, standing alone on the edge of a moor or Highland glen, personifies the harshness of the landscape and the struggle that man and beast have had to survive in this unforgiving part of Scotland. There is a recurrent theme in Highland folklore that these lone trees were used to mark burial places of warriors, heroes and chieftains. In areas further south, where the sight of a Scots pine may have been more unusual, they can be seen to mark ancient cairns, trackways or crossroads. In the Lowlands and in England, they were commonly planted to mark not only the drove roads used by the Scots cattle drovers bringing their herds south, but also the perimeters of holdings along the route where the cattle could spend the night.

Scots pine woods were a valuable source of timber; they once covered great areas of the Highlands but they are now restricted to Abernethy, Inshriach, Rothiemurchus and Glenmore Forests near Aviemore, Achnashellach in Wester Ross, Ballochbuie in upper Deeside, Einig Wood in Sutherland, Glen Affric in Invernessshire, Ordiequish in Morayshire and the Black Wood of Rannoch in Perthshire. The high resin content in the sap of Scots pines means the wood is slow to decay, so large numbers of trees were felled for house-and ship-building materials. Straight trees were in demand as spars for the rigging on sailing boats – hence Beinn nan Sparra, Hill of Spars, in Glen Affric. The light, strong wood was ideal for fencing stobs, furniture and deal storage boxes. Later, the wood was in demand for railway sleepers and telegraph poles.

Scots pine made reasonable charcoal and was a vital source of turpentine, rosin and tar. Turpentine was made by cutting a V-shaped notch in a tree and collecting the oleo-resinous gum that ran out. When distilled, oil of turpentine was produced and used in making varnish, oil paints, polish, and as an antiseptic. Rosin, the residue from the distillation process, was used to wax the horsehair strings of violins and other bowed string instruments, for sealing wax, glue, in soap and early printing inks. More recently, powdered rosin is rubbed on the soles of shoes worn by gymnasts, dancers and boxers to improve grip. Crude tar was made from Scots pines by digging a pit on the edge of a raised piece of ground with a pipe running from the bottom to a container. A fire of dried pine cones was built in the pit, and as soon as this was burning well it was fed a supply of small pieces of freshly cut pine wood. The black fluid that trickled down the pipe was wood tar, which made the best weatherproofing for wooden buildings, boats or fishermen’s nets.

Although Scots pine is quick to regenerate if left undisturbed, overcutting to meet timber demands, natural fires, overgrazing by sheep and deer, agricultural reclamations and even deliberate clearances in the Middle Ages to deter wolves have all been factors in the decline of the great woods that once covered 1,500,000 hectares.

The long history of coppicing is the reason why ancient coppice woodlands can be seen as the direct descendants of the original wildwood. It is perhaps strange that coppiced woodland, with a structure that looks least like one’s perception of an ancient natural wood, is biologically closest to it. Virtually no trees were deliberately planted for commercial woodland until the late seventeenth century. There was no need to; the coppice and standard system continued to work perfectly well, and in the north of Scotland the Scots pine woodlands seemed to stretch into infinity. In most woodland, apart from some very localized transplanting of saplings to maintain the coppice crop, any improvements were made by encouraging the more valuable species to fill gaps where old stools had died, or by layering and protecting the natural regeneration.

Unwanted shrubs and invasive species, such as birch, were sometimes removed to favour more desirable trees, but by and large the general pattern of species remained very close to the original natural cover. Even in the late eighteenth century it is recorded that ‘the underwood was not carefully selected and planted; the production of it, both in quantity and quality was, for the most part left to chance’.

There was, however, considerable planting of garden and orchard trees such as apple, pear, fig, sweet chestnut, common walnut and medlar, during the medieval era. Any planting of native trees was not for their timber but to enhance the landscape or to provide cover for game or as covert for foxes, with extensive planting becoming commonplace among wealthy landowners by the late Tudor period.

BRITISH FOREST LAWS

Enclosing common wood pasture to create deer parks, which had been in vogue under the Normans, suffered a decline after the Black Death devastated the country in 1350. There was a revival during the reign of Henry VIII, who created at least seven parks, the largest of which, Hampton Court Chase, enclosed 4,000 hectares of land and four villages, setting a precedent among the aristocracy and prosperous landed merchants. The owners of private deer parks tended to position small woods and clumps of trees to draw the eye to the skyline or other feature, and retained large single trees for the air of antiquity they gave to the landscape. These were practices which were later followed and improved upon by the great landscape designers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The history of enclosing woodland areas begins further back with the Saxons, who went to considerable trouble to protect woodland by building massive ‘wood-banks’ round them to establish ownership and keep livestock and deer out, similar to those that survive in a number of places, such as Poundwood in Essex. Wood pastures were re-established, which combined grazing animals with widely spaced trees which had often been pollarded. (Pollarding is cutting the top out of a tree about three metres from the ground, above the height that livestock could get at the regrowth, and harvesting the rods and poles that grew from the stump in the same way as when coppicing.) There were also wooded commons or heaths, on which there were common rights for grazing cattle, sheep, goats and pigs. Pigs were an important part of the Anglo-Saxon farming system, and during the autumn and winter pigs were driven considerable distances to graze ‘pannage’, the beech mast or nuts, and acorns.

THE HERITAGE OF PUCE NAMES

These woodland grazing places were known as denns, the Saxon word for swine pasture, and this is the origin of place names ending in-den, such as Tenterden. Any place name with the prefix ‘Swill’, as in Swilland in Suffolk, or Swillington in West Yorkshire, and ‘Swin’, as in Swindon in Berkshire, Swingfield Miniss in Kent, Swinhoe in Northumbria or Swinton in North Yorkshire and Berwickshire, are all associated with keeping swine. The Saxons also left us a heritage of place names associated with woods: any word ending in‘-ley’, ‘-leigh’ (from the Saxon, leah) was once a settlement in a clearing of substantial woodland, as in Chiddingly in Sussex, Hadleigh in Essex; those ending in‘-hurst’ (Saxon, hyrsf) were beside a wood or large grove of trees, as in Sissinghurst in Kent. Names with ‘-field’ (Saxon, field) refer to an open space in sight of woodland, not a field in the modern sense. Places ending in ‘-shaw’ are derived from the Saxon sceaga, meaning a thin strip of woodland;‘-hanger’, as in Colehanger, from hangra, a wood on a slope, or ‘-grove’, as in Bromsgrove, from the Saxon graf.

There is also every reason to believe that the Saxon nobles in the late Anglo-Saxon period had started to preserve deer in wooded, fenced parks on their estates for hunting, after the manner of the French and Normans. After all, there were family ties between France and England; Eadgifu, the sister of King Edmund I, was married to Charles III of France in AD 919 and her son, Louis IV of France, spent his early life in the English court. Hunting with hounds was the favourite pasttime among the nobles in France and Normandy, and King Edmund’s miraculous escape whilst entertaining envoys from East Anglia at his palace at Cheddar, described in the Catholic Encyclopaedia of 1913, substantiates the custom in Britain:

… the king rode out to hunt the stag in Mendip Forest. He became separated from his attendants and followed a stag at great speed in the direction of the Cheddar cliffs. The stag rushed blindly over the precipice and was followed by the hounds. Edmund end eavoured vainly to stop his horse; then, seeing death to be imminent, he remembered his harsh treatment of St Dunstan [Edmund was in the process of banishing St Dunstan from court] and promised to make amends if his life was spared. At that moment his horse was stopped on the very edge of the cliff. Giving thanks to God, he returned forth with to his palace, called for St Dunstan and bade him follow, then rode straight to Glastonbury. Entering the church, the king first knelt in prayer before the altar, then, taking St Dunstan by the hand, he gave him the kiss of peace, led him to the Abbot’s throne and, seating him thereon, promised him all assistance in restoring Divine worship and regular observance.

Curiously enough, the enormous value of deer and their importance to the monarchy during the Middle Ages is the reason why Britain is unique in possessing a few remaining areas of ancient and semi-natural woodland. The fact that we have a handful of national treasures such as the New Forest, Ashdown Forest, Epping Forest and the Forest of Bowland, to name only a few, is due to the formation of Royal Forests by William the Conqueror immediately after the Norman Conquest in 1066. These Royal Forests were large areas of unenclosed countryside, consisting of a highly variable mixture of woodland, heath, grass, scrub and wetland, providing the optimum habitat for various game species, particularly deer, which were reserved for the sole use of the King. The word ‘forest’ did not mean an area of densely wooded land as it is understood today; it was derived from the Latin forestis silva, which is literally translated as ‘outside wood’, but in the context of Royal Forests was interpreted as land outside common law.

The Forest Laws introduced by the Normans were designed to protect the habitat and certain designated species within Royal Forests. Offences under Forest Law were divided into two categories: trespass against the vert, the vegetation of the forest, and venison, the game. The first, and in many ways the most serious, was creating any disturbance to the habitat of game. Vert, from the Latin viridis, meaning green, was every tree, underwood or bush, growing in a forest and bearing green leaves which might provide cover or feed for deer. It was of two sorts: the over vert, or haut bois, and the nether vert, or sous bois — mature trees and underwood. Bracken and heather were not accounted vert. Trees which bore fruit, such as oaks and beech, were accounted as special vert, and these could not be felled in any man’s freehold within the limits of a Royal Forest except by permission of the foresters and verderers. Later on, in the thirteenth century, by an Ordinance of the Forest, freeholders dwelling within a forest could not cut housebote nor haybote (firewood) within their own woods without the permission of the foresters.

THE WORD ‘FOREST’ DID NOT MEAN AN AREA OF DENSELY WOODED LAND AS IT IS UNDERSTOOD TODAY; IT WAS DERIVED FROM THE LATIN FORESTIS SILVA, WHICH IS LITERALLY TRANSLATED AS ‘OUTSIDE WOOD’, BUT IN THE CONTEXT OF ROYAL FORESTS WAS INTERPRETED AS LAND OUTSIDE COMMON LAW.

The five animals of the forest protected by law were the hart, the hind of red deer, boar, hare and wolf. There were two other categories: the beasts of chase, the buck and doe, fallow deer, fox, marten and roe deer; and the beasts and fowls of warren, the hare, coney, rabbit, pheasant and partridge. The rights of chase and of warren, i.e. to hunt such beasts, were often granted to the nobility and clergy as gifts or for a fee. The King owned the game in his forests, but not necessarily the land; in some, such as the Forest of Dean, he owned the land, in others, it belonged to someone else but was subject to Forest Law.

A Royal Forest could be extended at the whim of a monarch to cover a colossal area; Waltham Forest, for example, which included Epping Forest, sprawled over 25,000 hectares and took in numerous manors, farms, hamlets, villages and the town of Waltham Abbey, all within the legal boundary of the Royal Forest. The landowners and farmers within a Royal Forest were forbidden to convert their land from pasture into arable or cut down their woods and were proscribed under Forest Law by the legal terms assart, purpresture and waste. These covered making an enclosure which would not allow the larger game to pass freely in or out of the land; causing any encroachment to the detriment of the forest, or which was hurtful to the vert or venison; spoiling and destroying the coverts or pastures of a forest by cutting down trees or lopping them, or by ploughing any meadow or grass land. All offenders who made assarts, purprestures or waste were fined, and if the land was their own freehold it was taken into the King’s hands until the fine was paid. Disafforested lands on the edge of the forest were known as the purlieu; agriculture was permitted here, but game that strayed onto the purlieu was still the property of the King. Furthermore, inhabitants of the forest were forbidden to bear hunting weapons or keep either gaze hounds or scent hounds; mastiffs were permitted as watchdogs, but they had to be expeditated by having one of the toes of a forepaw amputated to prevent them from hunting.

As some mitigation of these hardships and disabilities, concessions were made which gave inhabitants of the forest, depending on their location, a variety of strictly controlled rights, some of which exist to this day: estover, the right of taking firewood; pannage, the right to pasture swine in the forest; turbary, the right to cut turf or peats for fuel; various other rights of pasturage known as agistment; and harvesting the products of the forest in the form of nuts and berries. Abridging the rights in the Royal Forests was an extremely useful source of income or means of guaranteeing support. Acquiring any part of one was the ultimate status symbol, with a Forest being highest. William the Conqueror established about twenty-five Royal Forests, and by the time the Domesday Book had been written in 1086 the Earl of Chester had acquired three.

ABRIDGING THE RIGHTS IN THE ROYAL FORESTS WAS AN EXTREMELY USEFUL SOURCE OF INCOME OR MEANS OF GUARANTEEING SUPPORT. ACQUIRING ANY PART OF ONE WAS THE ULTIMATE STATUS SYMBOL, WITH A FOREST BEING HIGHEST.

Next in degree came the chase, an unenclosed hunting preserve similar to a Forest, which the great barons mostly possessed, which was subject to Common Law rather than Forest Law. After that came the smaller park, an enclosure permitted by grant of the King, which had to be fenced securely enough to stop venison entering it, otherwise it became forfeit; and, lastly, the free warren.

Law was enforced in the Royal Forests by six officers and a steward or seneschal, who was usually a noble of high rank and whose appointment by the Crown was one of great honour and authority. He in turn was supported by foresters of various classes: the foresters in fee, Forestarii defeodo, held hereditary office and were mostly of knightly rank; the Forestarii equitans, riders or rangers, were appointed by the King and held their office for life or the pleasure of the monarch. Under foresters in fee were an inferior class of forester whose duties corresponded to those of the modern gamekeeper. All these offices were ministerial and had no judicial functions. The verderer, viridarius, was a judicial officer of the forest chosen by the freeholders of the county in full county court in the same manner as a coroner. He was sworn to maintain the laws of the forest, and to receive and enrol the attachments and presentments of all manner of trespass within the forest, whether of vert or of venison. Reguarders were officers of the forest appointed by the King or by the Chief Justice in Eyre of the forest, and were always twelve in number. Their responsibility was to keep a roll on which was written all the ancient assarts, purprestures and wastes; and on another, all those that had been newly made since the last regard of the forest. Accompanied by the foresters, the reguarders surveyed all the old and new purprestures made within the forest, valued them, and wrote them down on their rolls; they also surveyed the King’s demesne lands and woods, and the waste in them by felling of timber, or by destruction of underwood; also all fences, and whether they were constructed according to the law of the forest. The Agisters were officers of the forest who received and accounted for the money paid for the herbage and pannage of the King’s demesne lands and woods within the forest. Agistment was of two kinds: firstly, the herbage of the woods and pastures, and secondly, of the mast of trees, known as pannage. The Agisters also presented trespasses done by cattle, and, assisted by the foresters, they agisted the King’s woods and lands, i.e., they made the agreements with the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, by which the number of the swine to be fed and the sums to be paid for them were settled. As regards the ordinary pasturage, no man could agist his beasts within the King’s forest except one who was an inhabitant of the forest, and had common appendant or appurtenant, by reason of his land lying within the forest.

FOREST LAW

The Court of Attachment, the primary court of the forest, was held at intervals of forty days and was known as the Forty Days’ Court. The object of this court was to receive the attachments or felons apprehended by the foresters and woodwards, and to enter them on the rolls of the verderers. The usual proceeding appears to have been that if the foresters found any man trespassing on the vert of the forest they might attach him by his body, and then cause him to find two pledges to appear at the next Court of Attachments. Upon his appearance at this court, he was mainprized or bailed until the next General Sessions or Iter of the Forest Justices. If he was found offending a second time, he had to find four pledges; if a third time, eight pledges; and if found offending a fourth time, he was detained in custody without bail or mainprize until the coming of the Justices. If a man was taken killing a deer or carrying it away, which was called being ‘taken with the manner’, he could be ‘attached by his body’, arrested, and imprisoned until delivered by the command of the King, the Chief Justice in Eyre of the Forest, or by the Chief Warden of the forest. However, no other officer of a lower degree than the Chief Warden could set him free or admit him to bail in these cases. The next stage in the chain was the Court of Swanimote; this was the court of the freeholders living within the forest, and was presided over by the Steward of the Forest. The judges were the elected verderers with a jury of reeves, who were bailiffs to local landowners and four men of the townships contiguous to the scene of the trespass complained of. The Swanimote convened three times a year and the officers of the forest had to be present, including the reguarders, agisters and woodwards. Sentences were not handed at the Swanimote; evidence was recorded and passed on to be presented to the Justices in Eyre of the Forest. Eyre means circuit, and the Justices were the ultimate authority in Forest Law, moving their court between the numerous Royal Forests and presided over the court of justice-seat, a triennial court held to punish offenders against the Forest Law and enquire into the state of the forest and its officers. Regardless of the frightful sentence that the Justices might eventually decide on (blinding and mutilation were not unheard of), the accused would already have spent three years in custody or have been deprived of his bail surety during that period.