(3): Interference with rights of property.

Freeholders whose lands lay in districts which the King was successful in afforesting, retained their freeholds, but their proprietary rights lost half their value. They could not root out trees, to clear their own lands for cultivation; for that was to commit an assart. They could not plough up waste land or pasture (even outside the covert) and turn it into arable, nor build a mill, nor take marl or lime from pits, nor make fishponds, nor enclose any space with hedge or paling; for these acts of ownership were purprestures or encroachments on the King’s rights. They could not destroy a tree or lop off branches (except under stringent conditions), without being guilty of waste. They could not agist their woods until a fortnight after Michaelmas, when the agisting of the King’s demesnes was over (thus reserving for him the best market and “pannage dues”). Heavy tolls were, under the name of “chiminage,” taken from carts and sumpter–horses passing through the woods. The Great Charter endeavoured to strike at the abuse of these Crown rights by providing machinery for the abolition of “evil customs.” The Carta de foresta entered more into detail. Not only were past trespasses of all three kinds—wastes, purprestures, and assarts—to be condoned, but the law was altered for the future. The long list of purprestures was curtailed: it was made lawful for a man to make (on his own freehold in the forest) mills, ponds, lime pits, ditches, and arable lands, provided these were not placed within the covert and did not infringe on any neighbour’s rights. He might also keep eyries for breeding falcons and other birds of prey, and take honey found on his own ground—rights previously denied.