Page:The New Forest - its history and its scenery.djvu/62

Rh Manwood, who wrote towards the end of Elizabeth's reign, had, long before this, predicted what must happen, and the straits to which the English navy, as we know was the case, would be reduced. In Charles I.'s time the Forests were in a shameful condition. The keepers were in arrears of wages, and paid themselves out of the timber. The consequences soon came. There was nothing left but wind-shaken and decayed trees in the New Forest, quite unfit for building ships, Charles II., however, in 1669, probably influenced by Evelyn's Silva, which appeared four years before, and had given a great impulse, throughout England, to planting, enclosed three hundred acres as a nursery for young oaks. But the waste and devastation still continued. At last, William III. legislated on the subject, for, to use the words of the Act, "the Forest was in danger of being destroyed;" and power was given to plant six thousand acres. In 1703 came the great hurricane, which Evelyn so deplores, uprooting some four thousand of the best oaks.

44