On This Day: Draconian Norman “forest laws” repealed

November 6th, 1217: England’s longest-lasting law, the Charter of the Forest, is sealed extending freedoms to the common people.

A mere two years after King John affixed the Royal Seal to Magna Carta Libertatum (the “Great Charter of Freedoms”) thereby subjecting the sovereign’s power to the law, England’s people gained another extension to their liberties. In November 1217, the 10-year-old King Henry III granted his assent to the Charter of the Forest marking a radical change to more than 100 years of royal tradition. For the first time in England’s history the common people gained legal rights.

Post AD 1066, with the Normans ruling the country, much of the kingdom had been converted into vast hunting estates known as “royal forests”. These included, for example, Sherwood, the New Forest and the whole of Essex. To the Normans a “forest” was a legally defined area where the “beasts of the chase [deer & wild pig] and their habitats including the vert” were for the pleasure of the monarch [1]. In AD 1079, for example, the New Forest in southern England was set aside by William I as his right, primarily for hunting deer. By 1217 it is estimated that royal estates encompassed nearly one-third of southern England.

These royal estates existed beyond the boundaries of the kingdom and were thus places where ordinary rules did not apply. Indeed, the draconian “forest laws” imposed across England by King William I forbade the cutting down of trees and regulated the gathering of fallen timber for firewood, the collection of berries or indeed anything growing within the forest. The Norman system ousted earlier Anglo-Saxon laws in which rights to the forest were not exclusive to the king or nobles but shared among the people (Woodbury, 2012). The common people’s access to their ancestral environment was drastically curtailed.

William’s forest laws established that taking wood from the forest or hunting in banned areas were crimes, the latter specifically known as poaching. Unsurprisingly, the laws were despised by the commonfolk as they were prevented from using the woodland to provide food, fuel and building materials. They were also banned from enclosing their land by fencing or other means, ostensibly to protect crops, as this restricted the hunt. Likewise, they could not use the timber from the woodland for building houses and were not allowed to hunt game, especially the king’s deer, to provide food for their families. For those living in the forest, they were explicitly not allowed to own dogs or a bow and arrows, and, as the “underwood” was also protected, commoners also faced a severe restriction on the availability of fuel. The punishments for breaking the laws could range from fines to, in the most severe cases, death. Repeat offenders, for example, were blinded or executed. In cases where a culprit could not be found, then whole communities might be penalised. Such punishments provided a lucrative income for England’s early Mediæval kings coincidently at a time when taxation was beyond the crown’s control.

In 1215 King John was coerced into adopting Magna Carta but this did not improve relations with his barons. When the king renounced the “Great Charter”, England was quickly cast back into turmoil. The following year, 1216, saw the untimely death (for him at least) of John and the succession of his infant son, Henry; Magna Carta was back on the table. In 1217, the new Charter of the Forest was sealed on behalf of the child king by his regent, William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke, and a papal emissary. Within it were four provisions concerning the royal forests which, across 17 clauses, restricted the crown’s authority over the forests, reduced their size and restored many of the ancient rights enjoyed by commoners before 1066. The charter became the longest-surviving law in English history remaining on the statute books until 1971 when it was superseded by the Wild Creatures and Forest Laws Act. Bon appétit!

Reference:

Woodbury, S. (2012), “Forest Laws in the Middle Ages”, Available online (accessed 18 September 2024).

Endnote:

1. The “vert” in this case is a late Middle English adjective for flora or greenery. The term entered English via Old French from the Latin viridis meaning “green”.