Royal forests

'[William] made many deer-parks, and he established laws therewith; so that whosoever slew a hart, or a hind, should be deprived of his eyesight. As he forbad men to kill the harts, so also the boars; and he loved the tall deer as if he were their father. Likewise he decreed respecting the hares that they should go free. His rich men bemoaned it, and the poor men shuddered at it.'
– the Anglo Saxon Chronicle

One of the first, and most resented, acts of William the Conqueror when he took power in England after 1066 was to introduce the Norman concept of 'forest law'. This involved the designation of large tracts of land as royal forest, which was subject to special and harsh restrictions. These included laws prohibiting not only the hunting of large game, such as deer and wild boar, but also small animals such as hares.

There were also severe restrictions on any activity that might impinge upon the habitat of wild game within the forest. It was forbidden, therefore, to enclose or cultivate land within a forest's boundaries; to fell trees or cut peat; or even, in some cases, to gather firewood or acorns. Any hounds or other dogs owned by forest dwellers, meanwhile, were required to have their claws removed to prevent them doing any harm to the forest game.

The declaration of land as a royal forest was known by the legal term 'afforestation'. Initially, such as in the New Forest, in Hampshire, which was one of the first such forests established by William I, this involved the expulsion of most of the existing residents and the destruction of their farms, homes and villages. As the area covered by royal forests expanded, however, and the availability of land on which to relocate displaced people decreased, many forest inhabitants were left in place. In addition to individual dwellings, belonging to both rich and poor householders, later royal forests often included complete villages or small towns.

By the time William I sent out his commissioners to compile the Domesday Book in 1086, he had established 21 royal forests. Under his successors, the number increased to 80, covering three tenths of the entire land area of England. Although this included virtually every major wooded area in the country, it was not solely 'forest' as we understand the word today. Rather, it included a mixture of woodland, heath, scrub, marsh and cultivated areas. Often these were much greater in extent than the actual woodland.

The royal forests reached their greatest extent during the reign of Henry II (1135-1154), although he was not as severe in his punishment of offenders against forest law as his predecessors. The reign of William II (1087-1100) was the harshest in this respect, when a man was liable to be blinded just for disturbing the royal deer. A whole panoply of forest law was established with the sole intention of protecting the 'venison and vert' of the forest. ('Venison' was used to describe wild boar, as well as red, fallow and roe deer; 'vert' was the habitat on which they depended.)

The 'afforested' areas were much more than just royal hunting grounds, however. Indeed, the vast majority of the hunting that went on in them was not carried out by the king and his entourage at all, but by professional huntsmen to provide meat for the monarch and his nobles. Far more importantly than the deer alone, in time the royal forests increasingly served as power bases for the monarchy, employing what amounted to a private army of officials and enforcers. As a system of fines (initially introduced by Henry I) increasingly replaced the more barbaric punishments for offences against forest law, the forests also became a major source of revenue for the crown right through to the 17th century.

The privileges accorded to the crown in royal forests were always a source of great resentment. Indeed, the stories of Robin Hood and his outlaws in Sherwood Forest are in large part about the refusal of this group to accept the dictates of forest law. But it was not only the poor and dispossessed who railed against the royal forest prerogatives. The fact that many nobles also objected to the extent of the monarch's privileges is demonstrated by the fact that several clauses in the Magna Carta imposed limits on the king's powers in this respect.

This didn't resolve the conflict, however, and as late as the 17th century Charles I was attempting to revive various royal forest privileges. This prompted Parliament to pass an 'Act for the Disafforestation, Sale, and Improvement of Royal Forests' in 1653. Sherwood Forest was one of those that was 'disafforested' and sold off.

Time Team excavated a royal forest site dating from around the 12th century at Hanslope as part of the 2005 series.

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