ITS LATER HISTORY.
[Illustration: The Millaford Brook. Haliday’s Hill Wood.]
We need not dwell so long upon this as the former portion of the
History, for in many cases it is nothing but a bare recital of
perambulations and Acts of Parliament. The true history of a forest is
rather an account of its trees and its flowers and birds, than an
historical narrative. Yet even here there are some important facts
connected with the nation’s life, and illustrating the character of its
kings.
We meet with no perambulation of the New Forest until the eighth year of
Edward I.—the second ever made of an English forest—and, by comparing it
with _Domesday_, we may see how, since the Conqueror’s time, the Forest
had gradually taken the natural limits of the country—the Avon and the
Southampton Water bounding it on the east and west, and the sea on the
south, and the chalk of Wiltshire on the north.[44]
The next perambulation in the twenty-ninth year of the same reign is
more noticeable,[45] as it disafforests so much. It is the same
perambulation which we find made in the twenty-second year of Charles
II., and nominally the same which is followed to this day.
To understand the cause of the difference in these perambulations, we
must, in fact, thoroughly understand the great movements which had been
going on during the previous years, and the increasing power of the
nobles and the people. From Henry III. had been wrung the Charta de
Forestâ, the terms of which had been settled before John’s death. Still,
little, or scarcely anything, was put into practical effect. In 1297,
however, the Earls of Hereford and Norfolk not only refused to accompany
Edward I. to Flanders, but, upon their suspension from their offices,
issued a proclamation, complaining that the two Charters of the
liberties of the people were not observed. On the 10th of October, a
Parliament was assembled, and his son passed the “Confirmatio Cartarum,”
to which Edward, now at Ghent, assented. Still the two earls, from
various causes, were not satisfied; and in 1298 demanded that the
perambulations of the different Forests should be made. In consequence,
during the summer of the next year, the King issued writs to the
sheriffs, promising that the commissioners should meet about Michaelmas
at Northampton.[46]
This was done: and the perambulation of the New Forest was carried out
in strict accordance with the provisions of the Charta de Forestâ, for
the jurors who were employed expressly state that the bounds which they
have determined were those of the Forest before the reign of Henry II.;
and that all those places mentioned in the perambulation of 1279 and now
omitted, were afforested by his successors, though they cannot say to
what extent or by whom.[47] Most probably it had been reserved for John
to show here, as in other cases, to what absolute madness selfishness
will carry a man.
After this, nothing, with one exception, of any general importance
occurs.[48] Having in his prosperity incurred all the odium of
attempting to revive the hated Forest Laws, in his adversity Charles I.
granted as security the New Forest, and Sherwood, and other Crown lands
to his creditors.[49] He had still learnt no lesson from the Ship-money,
and would have pawned England itself, rather than yield to that
obstinacy, which was but the other side of his weakness of character.
With the decline of hawking and hunting, the Forest Laws fell into
decay, and the Forests themselves were less regarded, and their
boundaries less strictly observed. Under the Stuarts, we find the first
traces of that system, which at last resulted in the almost entire
devastation of the New Forest. James I. granted no less than twenty
assart lands—_agri ex-sariti_—there having been previously only
three;[50] and gave the privilege of windfalls to various persons;[51]
whilst officers actually applied to him for trees in lieu of pay for
their troops:[52] and Charles II. bestowed the young woods of
Brockenhurst to the maids of honour of his court.[53]
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.[54] The
consequences soon came. There was nothing left but wind-shaken and
decayed trees in the New Forest, quite unfit for building ships.[55]
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;”[56] 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.
Nothing was done towards planting during the reigns of Anne and George
I.;[57] and Phillipson’s and Pitt’s plantations in 1755 and 1756 are the
next, but they have never thrived, owing to the land not having been
drained, and the trees not having been thinned out at the proper time.
In 1789 a Commission was appointed, and revealed a terrible state of
things. William’s provisions had not only been set aside, but defied.
Cattle were turned out, the furze and heath cut, and the marl dug by
those who had no privileges. The Forest was, in fact, robbed under every
pretext. The deer, from being overstocked, died in the winter by
hundreds from starvation. On every side, too, encroachments were made by
those whose business it was to prevent them. The rabbits destroyed the
young timber, whilst the old was stolen.[58]
In 1800 there was fresh legislation,[59] but it does not seem to have
taken much effect; though, in 1808, a new system of planting upon a
definite plan was introduced.
In 1848 another Commission was appointed, and showed that the old abuses
still lingered, that depredations were still committed, and
encroachments still made.[60] Law was at last restored. A great number
of the claims were disallowed, and the rights of the commoners defined.
So many head of cattle may now be turned out, by those who have Forest
rights, through the year, except during the fence-month, which lasts
from the 20th of June to the 20th of July, and the winter-hayning, from
the 22nd of November to the 4th of May. Pigs, too, upon a nominal
payment, may also be turned out for the mast and acorns during the
pannage-month, lasting from September the 25th to the 22nd of November,
by those who have a right to common of pannage; whilst any person can,
by applying to the woodmen, buy wood for fuel.
Lastly, in 1851, the deer, the cause of so much ill-feeling and crime,
were abolished, and the Crown thereby acquired the right of planting
10,000 additional acres.[61] These changes have already effected much
good both for the district and the inhabitants. The enclosures are now
systematically drained; and the Foresters find, in the works which are
being carried forward, regular employment throughout the year.[62] A
large nursery has been formed at Rhinefield, and somewhere about 700
acres are annually planted, the young oaks being set between Scotch
firs, which serve both as “nurses” to draw them up, and a screen to
shelter them from the winds. Experiments, too, are being made to
acclimatize several new trees, but it is premature to judge with what
success.
Further, I need scarcely add that all sorts of schemes, from the day
when Defoe proposed to colonize the district with the Palatine refugees
from the Rhine to the present, have been suggested for reclaiming the
Forest. None have ever, from the nature of the soil, been found to
answer; and the present condition is certainly, for many reasons, the
best. The time will some day arrive when, as England becomes more and
more overcrowded,—as each heath and common are swallowed up,—the New
Forest will be as much a necessity to the country as the parks are now
to London. We talk about the duty of reclaiming waste lands, and making
corn spring up where none before grew. But it is often as much a duty to
leave them alone. Land has higher and nobler offices to perform than to
support houses or grow corn—to nourish not so much the body as the mind
of man, to gladden the eye with its loveliness, and to brace his soul
with that strength which is alone to be gained in the solitude of the
moors and the woods.
[Illustration: The Woodcutter’s Track, between Mark Ash and Winding
Shoot.]