Page:The New Forest - its history and its scenery.djvu/53

Rh on the subject. Without at all leaning on the etymology which has been before given, we must remember that an ancient forest did not simply mean a space thickly covered with trees, but also wild open ground, and lawns and glades. The word hurst, which, as we have seen, is so common a termination throughout the district, means a wood which produces fodder for cattle, answering to the Old High-German spreidach. The old forests possessed, if not a large, some scattered population. For them a special code of laws was made, or rather gradually developed itself. Canute himself appointed various officers—Primarii, our Verderers; Lespegend, our Regarders; and Tinemen, our Keepers. The offences of hunting, wounding, or killing a deer, striking a verderer or regarder, cutting vert, are all minutely specified in his Forest Law, and punished, according to rank and other circumstances, with different degrees of severity. The Court of Swanimote was, in a sense, counterpart to the Courts of Folkemote and Portemote in towns. A forest was, in fact, a kingdom within a kingdom, with certain, well-defined laws, suited to its requirements, and differing from the common law of the land. The inhabitants had regular occupations, 35