"A stretch of land, thick planted with trees;" so you picture a forest to yourself, but old English law held otherwise. There were miles of woodland that were not forest at all, and acres of pasture that were. John Manwood, the Elizabethan lawyer, still our chief authority on the subject, defines it as "a certain territory of woody grounds and fruitful pastures, privileged for wild beasts and fowls of forest, chase, and warren, to rest and abide in under the safe protection of the king." Such a preserve was exactly delimited, and might contain villages, churches, and so forth, within its bounds, as the New Forest does to-day. The king had certain rights over all, yet it was mainly private property; nay, there might be spaces in it, but not of it,—within its Bounds, but not within its Regard, as the phrase ran,—and so exempt from its peculiar laws. Manwood gives a picturesque, though quite erroneous derivation of the term: it was For Rest of the wild beasts; but a sounder etymology traces the word to foris (= outside), for that it was outside the jurisdiction of the Common Law, and had codes, courts, and officers of its own. The whole business was for centuries alike insult and wrong to the Commons of England.

Hunting was not merely the chief amusement of our early kings: it was a necessary pursuit for the keeping down of the wild beasts then a real danger to the fields and their cultivators. The Forest Charter of Canute the Dane (dated 1016) is a myth; but it is certain that, before the Conquest, the sovereign had a peculiar—howbeit, an undefined—property in the woodland. The Conqueror, who, according to the Saxon Chronicle, loved the tall deer as if he had been their father, devastated far and wide to make the New Forest; and he and his immediate successors punished hurt done to the deer with loss of life or limb. The Great Charter contained provisions against this odious abuse of power, and under Henry III. a special charter of the forest enacted that no man should lose life or limb for killing deer, at the same time that it disafforested (i.e., removed from the forest to which they had been improperly joined) vast tracts of country. After the New there was but one other forest made in England, that was the land round Hampton Court, afforested under Henry VIII. by Act of Parliament.

An attempt to revive royal rights over the woodland hastened the fall of Charles the First, and then the Commonwealth gave the forest system its death-blow, though it was not till the time of George III. that the great mass of enactments was formally repealed. A Court of Swainmote lingers in the New Forest and elsewhere, and its officials, called Verderers, albeit shorn of their ancient power and splendour, do their quaint antics still; but by an odd, though happily not singular inversion, those old popular wrongs are now become popular privileges; Epping Forest, for instance, could never have become a public park but for the Crown rights, and these same rights over the woodlands throughout the country now yield an income which more than covers the cost of the whole Civil List. Had the Crown looked more sharply to its own, the profit to ourselves had been still vaster.

The forest laws, however complex in detail, were all inspired by one consistent idea—the preservation, to wit, of the king's venison. Even under Edward I.'s comparatively humane rule the verderer held an inquest upon a deer found dead in the Regard, just as the coroner did upon a man's body, and the jury found how the creature came to its end. The very arrows gleaned there were entered in the verderer's role. The freeholder within that charmed ground might not fell his own timber without leave, lest he should spoil the Cover: nor could he turn out his goats to browse, for they would taint the pasture; whilst he must feed his sheep in moderation, else he committed the grievous offence of surcharging the forest.

The forest had a huge staff of officers. First was a multitude of subordinates; foresters—who, if they kept ale-houses in the Regard, and encouraged folk to drink therein, committed a special crime called Scotale—agistors, woodwards, keepers, verminers, sub-verminers, and what not. These haled trespassers before the Court of Attachments, which was held every forty days. In command of them were the verderers, constituting, with representatives from the forest townships, the Court of Swainmote, which met thrice a year for (inter alia) the trial of the more important offences. Judgment on its findings was given at the Court of Justice Seat, held but once in the three years, under the presidency of a Lord Chief Justice in Eyre of the Forest. There were but two—one for the north, the other for the south of the Trent; and inasmuch as this officer was commonly some great noble—"A man," says my Lord Coke, with a touch of irony, "of greater dignity than of knowledge of the laws of the forest"—some skilled professional folk were joined with him in the commission. The last Court of Justice Seat was held in 1670 by the Earl of Oxford. It was a mere form: the last but one (in 1635) had created a fine pother by its exactions.

Offences were either trespasses in Vert or trespasses in Venison. The Vert (= green) was of course the cover; and the destruction thereof was called Waste, while Assart was stubbling it up to make ploughland: and Purpestre (a most grievous business) was building on or enclosing part of the forest. (As late as the reign of Charles I., Sir Sampson Darnell was heavily fined for erecting a windmill on his own ground in Windsor Chase). Moreover, Vert might be Over Vert or Hault-Bois, or it might be Nether-Vert or Sous-Bois, according as it was underwood or not; and in either case it was Special Vert if it bore fruit, such as pears, crabs, hips, and haws, whereon the deer might feed.

Venison, as lawyers understood it, was composed of Beasts of Forest—to wit, the hart, the hind, the hare, the boar, and the wolf—and Beasts of Chase. A Chase, which was like a park, but was not enclosed, might be held by a subject; but every forest was likewise a chase and a warren, and the beasts of chase were the buck, the doe, the martern, and the roe. These were described with wondrous detail. The hart—"the most stately beast which goeth on the earth, having as it were a majesty both in its gait and countenance"—was in his first year a Calf, in his second a Broket, in his third a Spayad, in his fourth a Staggard, in his fifth a Stag, and in his sixth a Hart. If he escaped the pursuit of king or queen he became a Hart Royal, which no subject might molest.

In 1194, Richard Coeur-de-Lion hunted a noble beast out of the forest of Sherwood into Barnsdale in Yorkshire, and there losing him, made proclamation "that no person should kill, hunt, or chase the said hart, but that he might safely return into the forest again." An animal thus honoured was called a Hart Royal Proclaimed, and in the 21st of King Henry VII., a man was indicted for taking so precious a life, but the case apparently went off for want of technical proof of proclamation. Your precise woodman talked of a Bevy of roes, a Richesse of marterns, a Lease of bucks. He said that a hart harboureth, whilst a buck lodgeth, and a hare was seated. He dislodged the buck, but he started the hare. He would tell you that the hart belloweth, the buck groaneth, the boar freameth; and whilst the hart had a Tail, the roe had a Single, the boar a Wreath, and the fox a Bush (not Brush be it noted) or Holy Water Sprinkle. Their amours (e.g. a fox went to clicketing), their young, their very excrements were dignified in a long array of special terms, the divisions and subdivisions of the deers' antlers being enough of themselves to gravel the tyro in woodcraft.

The peace of those precious animals was elaborately safeguarded, and it was specially forbidden "to haunt the forest" during the Fence Moneth, which was fifteen days before and after Midsummer. Most forests were surrounded by Purlieus, that is, territory which had been disafforested. Officers called Rangers patrolled this debateable territory to drive back the errant deer, and whilst the Purlieu-man (namely, the freeholder therein) might hunt on his own lands, he must call off his dogs if the beast once touched the forest. And every three years there was a special Drift of the forest, which was a sort of census of the venison. A man taken With the Manner (Main Ouverte), that is, in the act of doing for the deer, was attached without bail. The offender might thus be caught red-handed in four ways:—(1) in Dog-Draw he was chasing a wounded beast with hounds; (2) in Stable-Stand he was drawing his bow in ambush; (3) in Back-Bare he was carrying off his quarry; (4) in Bloudy-Hand he bore the red marks of his spoil. Divers statutes put a yet keener edge upon the common law, as that under Henry VII., whereby hunting in the forest at night with painted vizards was made a felony.

And what of the dogs? The forest freeholders might keep mastiffs for the protection of home and homestead; but a Court of Regards was held every three years for their Lawing or Expeditation. Thereat your mastiff was made to place one of his paws upon a billet of wood, "then one with a mallet, setting a chisel of three inches broad upon the three claws of his forefoot, at one blow doth smite them clean off." Other dogs of any size were summarily banished the precincts.

Royalty was ever jealous of these rights. A Fee-buck and a Fee-doe were allotted to every verderer yearly (but these were but wages in kind); and every lord of Parliament going or returning through the forest, on summons from the king, might take one or two beasts, but if no forester was at hand, he must sound his horn, lest the kill might seem done in secret. But all the king's horses and all the king's men could not quench English love of sport. Robin Hood and his merry band are but the glorified types of a very multitude who chased the deer night and day, for the forest stretched mile after mile over hill and dale, and the tall deer were fair to look on, and the taste of their flesh was as sweet to the wanderer and the outlaw as to the noble or the monarch; and the law, albeit cruel, was weak, and a touch of danger but gave zest to the pursuit. To take a later instance, was not Shakespeare himself the most illustrious of poachers? Not on such rovers but on the poor hard-working folk within the Regard did the forest laws press with cruel weight, and yet old Manwood highly extols their sweet reasonableness—"The king," he says, "wearied with his anxious care for the weal of his subjects, is given by law these forests that he may delight his eye at sight of the vert, and mind and body by the hunting of the wild beasts," and so he finds it in his heart to regret that in his day the forests were somewhat diminished. And since the sovereign's good is now the peoples' good, we may agree with him, though not for the same reason.