Further reading

Royal forests

The Royal Forests of England by Raymond Grant (Sutton, 1991)
A History of English Forestry by N D G James (Basil Blackwell, 1981)
Royal Forests of Medieval England by Charles R Young (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1979)
Historic Forests of England by Ralph Whitlock (A S Barnes, 1979)

There are no books on medieval royal forests currently in print, but most of the above can usually be obtained from online booksellers. Ralph Whitlock's book includes a gazetteer and maps of the major royal forests, together with extensive illustrations. Raymond Grant's book is particularly detailed in relation to forest law. And N D G James describes forest management into modern times.

Charles Young's book, meanwhile, contains detailed descriptions of how the royal forests were established and then reorganised under the Angevin kings. It then has separate chapters on the Angevin system at work; how royal forests became a political issue and the subject of a number of articles in Magna Carta; the law and administration of the system at its height; the forest economy; the political and constitutional struggles from 1258-1327; and the forest in the later Middle Ages.

Other books

English Medieval Industries: Craftsmen, techniques, products edited by John Blair and Nigel Ramsay (Hambledon Press, paperback edition, 2001) £19.95
This work is intended as a modern successor to L F Salzman's English Industries in the Middle Ages (1913). The approach to each industry is by material, discussing its acquisition, working and sale as a finished product. Only industries that resulted in the production of consumer goods and where substantial numbers of artefacts survive from the Middle Ages are dealt with (fishing and brewing are therefore omitted); the text is illustrated by pictures of surviving objects and contemporary representations of medieval work.

The Medieval English Economy by Jim Bolton (Everyman, 1988)
'The book on the subject that I recommended to everyone' – Mick Aston, but unfortunately out of print.

The Rural Settlements of Medieval England edited by Mick Aston, David Austin and Christopher Dyer (Blackwell, 1989)
A wide-ranging collection of essays, written by a distinguished team of archaeologists, historians and historical geographers.

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