Chapter Forty–four, I.: The Royal Forests.

Homines qui manent extra forestam non veniant de cetero coram justiciariis nostris de foresta per communes summoniciones, nisi sint in placito, vel plegii alicujus vel aliquorum, qui attachiati sint pro foresta.

Men who dwell without the forest need not henceforth come before our justiciars of the forest upon a general summons, except those who are impleaded, or who have become sureties for any person or persons attached for forest offences.

These provisions were intended to redress one of many abuses connected with the oppressive forest laws.

The word “forest” had acquired an exact technical meaning, and was applied to certain wide districts, scattered irregularly throughout England, reserved to the Crown for purposes of sport. Here the wild boar and deer of various species found shelter, in which they were protected by the severe regulations of the “Forest Law.” It was the prevalence of this code which marked off the districts known as royal forests from all that lay extra forestam; and this made an accurate definition possible. A “forest” was a district where this law prevailed to the exclusion of the common law which ruled outside. The forests with their inhabitants had been omitted from the process by which the rest of England had been assimilated under a uniform lex terrae: this was the root from which many evils grew.

From this definition of a forest as a legal, not a physical, entity, it follows that the word is far from synonymous with terms such as “wood” or “covert,” implying merely natural characteristics. A forest was not necessarily covered with trees throughout the whole or even the greater part of its extent. Miles of moorland and heath and undulating downs might be included, and even fertile valleys, with ploughed fields and villages nestling among them. The same forest, indeed, might contain many woods, some of them on royal demesne and some the property of private owners. Within the imaginary line the King’s power was supreme, and he used it frankly for the preservation of beasts of the chase. The men who happened to dwell there were subject to a law, in the expressive words of Dr. Stubbs, “cruel to man and beast.” If accused of forest offences, they had no protection from the common law of England any more than from the law of a foreign land. It was something, however, that even in these high places of prerogative, customary rules grew up, obtained authoritative recognition, and hardened into laws which set some limits to royal caprice. Before John’s time the forest code, as set forth in the Assize of Woodstock, had taken its place as a definite system of law, distinct from common law and canon law alike.