Page:Devon & Cornwall Notes & Queries.djvu/260

 Devon Nates and Queries. 189 147. Forest Law. — In Vol. Hi. of the Selden Society's publications {Select Pleas of the Forest) we have a valuable contribution by Mr. G. J. Turner to our knowledge of a somewhat obscure subject, the Forest Laws. The forest, as Mr. Turner informs us, is **a tract of land within which a {>articular body of law is enforced having for its object the preservation of certain animals ferae naturae.** When such a tract of land is granted to a subject '* the jurisdiction of the justices of the forest ceases,'* and it is termed a chase. Any no reason for supposing that park was used exclusively of enclosures made for the purpose of preserving beasts ferae naturae.*' ''The public had a right of hunting beasts ferae naturae in all unenclosed lands unless the lands were subject to the forest laws or to some restriction upon hunting arising out of a royal grant.*' "The word Warren was used to denote either the exclusive right of hunting and taking certain beasts ferae naturae in a particular piece of land or the land over which such right extended." These are some of the clear and explicit definitions with which branches of the subject are introduced. The history of English forests may be conveniently divided into three periods, of which the first extended from the earliest times to 1217, the year of the granting of the Charter of the Forest, the second from 1217 to 1301, when large tracts were disafforested by King Edward I ; the third from 1301 to the present day. Mr. Turner's volume is chiefly concerned with the second of these periods. Among other things we learn firom it how little dependence can be placed upon Manwood*s Treatise on the Forest Laws, which has hitherto been regarded as the standard book on the subject, chiefly, as it would appear, because ho other book was available. The selections from the Forest Eyre Rolls to which Mr. Turner treats us, and upon which his very able introduction is based, are confined to the Midlands and Eastern Counties. The forests of Dartmoor and Exmoor are only incidentally mentioned, but a note on pp. 107-8 deserves notice as con- firming a suggestion thrown out in Trans. Devon Association^ xxxiii., 591. The forest of Exmoor, says Mr. Turner, seems to have extended into " Devonshire in the reign of Ed. IIL At an Inquisition held at Wells on 2 July, 1366, it was
 * land enclosed with a paling " is called a park. " There is