preserved by private persons in their warrens, with the result that a local historian might very well state that other animals and birds were forestal which originally were not really forestal creatures.

The existence of a forest brought into being a host of officials, to each of whom the forest meant his own continuance in power and prosperity. They were the civil servants of the Middle Ages, conspicuous over a large part of England, and constant reminders both to the secular and the ecclesiastical lords, as well as to every peasant, of the power of the Crown. We may almost regard them as in the same position as the Government officials in modern France, who are to be found in every country town. Nothing was easier than for them to become petty tyrants and to extort money for themselves as well as for the king. Norman Sampson, the riding forester, under Geoffrey of Childwick, steward of the forest of Huntingdon in 1255, was one of this kind, and he thus figures in the Huntingdon Eyre of 1255. It is "presented" that he “took a certain man at Weybridge who was with the parson of Colworth, . . . and he took the said man to Houghton to the house of William Dering his host, and he put him upon a harrow, and pained him sorely, so that William gave to him twelve pence that he might be released from the said pains, and afterwards he gave to him five shillings that he might by his aid be able to withdraw quit. It is also presented by the same persons of the same person that a certain Norman, his page, and he himself were evildoers to the venison of the lord king, and that Norman Sampson sold three oaks in Weybridge and com

mitted many other trespasses while he was a forester" (h). And so, after various proceedings, Norman Sampson is fined two marks. Imagination is not needed to picture this little drama-the poor man brought to the farm and cruelly and ingeniously tortured, the money paid to the brutal forester, who, unpopular among his fellows, is himself brought before the justices in eyre and fined in his turn. There were many grades of forest officials, and one may be sure that there were not lacking official disagreements and personal jealousies.

In 1238 England, for the purpose of forest administration, was divided into two provinces-one north and one south of the Trent, and over each of these two departments there was placed a justice of the forest. The title is a little misleading, since it suggests a legal rather than a ministerial officer. These personages were, in fact, head foresters. Mathew Paris actually speaks of one of these men as summus anglie forestarius, as well as summus justiciarius foreste, and the first description better explains their functions; for except that it was part of their duty to release on bail prisoners who were in custody, they had no judicial functions, and "in general carried out all the executive work relating to the forests." For a time, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, these men seem to have been called wardens, but by the year 1377 the old designation was resumed. To manage a tract of country so immense as that over which their jurisdiction extended was obviously beyond the power of two officials, and deputies were therefore appointed, either by the justice himself or by the king.

(h) Select Pleas of the Forest, p. 20.

The justices "were usually men of considerable political standing. By the end of the fourteenth century the office evidently became a sinecure, being then usually held by a nobleman of rank. But though a sinecure the income attached to it was certainly not derived solely from an official salary, for from the close of the thirteenth century the justices of the forest south of the Trent received from the king an annual payment of a hundred pounds only, and the salary of the justices of the forest north of the Trent was only two-thirds of that sum."

Whether the lieutenants of these men were not also called wardens seems not to be so certain as the editor of the Selden Society's volume considers. In a state of society so rude as that of medieval England, and in country, districts, a strict division of offices is difficult, and the editor remarks that the wardens, whom he places as next. in authority to the justices, "were variously described in official documents, and seldom expressly as wardens; but the word may conveniently be used to avoid ambiguity." A desire to avoid ambiguity sometimes tends to false impressions, and as the warden was the person who had the custody of a single forest it is not clear why he could not have also been the local deputy of the head forester. Sometimes in documents he was called steward or bailiff or chief forester; sometimes he was appointed for life, sometimes his office was hereditary, but whatever his title he was the local as distinguished from the general ministerial representative of the king. Their position often made these men tyrannical to the last degree, and nothing made the laws of the forests and their administration more hateful to the general body of the English

people for there was scarcely a district where they had not some jurisdiction-than the misdeeds of these officials. In the Rutland Eyre of 1269 a long description is given of the wrongdoings of Peter de Neville, who seems to have been one of the worst behaved of these men:

"The same Peter imputed to Master William de Martinvast that he was an evil doer with respect to the venison of the lord king in his bailiwick (balliva), and he imprisoned him at Allexton on two occasions, and afterwards he delivered him for a fine of one hundred shillings which he received from him; for which let him answer to the lord king, and to judgement with him because he delivered the aforesaid Master William without any warrant. .

The same Peter charged Henry Gerard with a certain trespass to the forest, and took his beasts and detained them until he had paid him half a mark for their delivery and five shillings for their custody" (i).

In fact, the said Peter de Neville acted dishonestly by his lord and unjustly to his neighbours, and the long tale of his many crimes gives a complete picture of individual forestal tyranny. He had his herd of three hundred pigs digging in the enclosure of the king, and he took money and kind from those who dwelt about him, and actually made a gaol at Allexton, in Leicestershire, which, says the roll in question, "is full of water at the bottom, and in which he imprisoned many men whom he took, lawfully and unlawfully, by reason of his bailiwick in the county of Rutland, and he delivered many

(i) Select Pleas of the Forest, p. 49.

of them at his pleasure and without warrant." Such were the evil doings of Peter de Neville-capitalis forestarius Foreste comitatus Roteland-at the end of the reign of Henry III.

The active work of the forest was entrusted to men who safeguarded the venison and the vert, the deer and the greenwood, the timber and the underwood, who prevented poaching and watched for encroachments on the dominion of the king, and collected dues the foresters, the verderers, and the agisters.

There were riding foresters and walking foresters, and pages, all appointed and paid by the warden, the custodian of the forest, if they were remunerated at all, but more often than not they actually paid the custodian of the forest for their place. The result was the existence of another rapacious class, who made their living from their poorer and less powerful neighbours, and accentuated what, in the Middle Ages, was an extreme social grievance of the people. Of this state of affairs we obtain a picture, the truth of which is undoubted, in the complaints against the Charter of the Forest, which were formulated by the men of Somerset:

"3. Although the charter says that view of the lawing of dogs ought to be made every third year when the regard is made, and then by view of loyal men and good, and not otherwise, yet the foresters come through the towns blowing horns and making a nuisance with much noise to cause the mastiffs to come out to bark at them; and so they attach the good folk every year for their mastiffs