A Fateful Taste for Venison: The Royal Forests Quiz

Answer: A large region of woods, grassland, and/or wetland, in which hunting was reserved for the monarchy and their guests

A royal "forest" was not just forest -- it could also include large swaths of grassland, heath, and wetland, anything that could support boars, deer, and other desirable game. Typically it wasn't good agricultural land, but designating a region as a royal forest (a process called "afforestation") could and sometimes did displace the local residents. Hunting rights were heavily restricted in royal forests; generally, only the royal family could hunt the designated game animals, although they sometimes also granted that right to favored or fee-paying nobles.

Local commoners had some rights to the products of the royal forest. Depending on the forest, they might be allowed to cut firewood or turf, or to let their pigs forage in the forest. They couldn't clear land, though, or enclose pastures, or even keep dogs if they lived in the forest.

Answer: Soon after the Norman Conquest of 1066

Prior to the Norman conquest, the kings of England loved to hunt, but forests were a part of ordinary English life and a part of ordinary English law. It was King William I -- the Conqueror -- who introduced forest law and began the process of creating royal forests, where the rights of commoners and even nobles were restricted.

The "New Forest" (Nova Foresta) was one of these, created circa 1076.

Answer: Carrying hunting weapons within the forest

A trespass against the vert was a crime against the vegetation that supported the game animals -- deer, boars, hares, and so on. Enclosing a pasture was a type of "purpresture," an attempt to reserve forest land (or grassland) for one's own livestock at the expense of game animals. Clearing new land for farming ("assarting"), or chopping down trees more generally ("waste"), also had the effect of limiting habitat for game animals, and so it was forbidden. Serious penalties were attached to these crimes under forest law, which made the law (and those who kept it) about as popular as you would expect.

Answer: A commoner killing deer grazing in farmland just outside the forest

The royal forests were not supposed to be used for agriculture (with some exceptions for land that had been farmed before the forests became royal), but the purlieus -- the boundary zones just outside the forests -- could be farmed. Deer from the forests could legally be killed in the purlieus, if they were doing damage (by eating crops, for example).

Inside the forest, though, deer could not be touched. Not only that, but ordinary people couldn't do anything suggesting they *might* want to touch a deer, or another protected animal. They couldn't carry hunting weapons; they couldn't keep dogs (with a special exception for partially declawed mastiffs); and they certainly couldn't set traps.

Answer: The Domesday Book

The "Domesday Book," named because -- like Doomsday -- its judgments were final, was a huge undertaking set in motion by William the Conqueror. Its goal was to record land holdings (adding legitimacy to the whole collection) and regularize tax collection (which Norman nobles had proven adept at evading).

The assessors recorded who held what lands; how rich those lands were; and what taxes were owed, including specific, historical tributes (like honey or, my favorite, "10 ora of pence" to the lady of the manor in Eardisland, "so that she might be happy").

The New Forest, and the villages within it and outside it, was recorded in this far-ranging document.

Answer: A monastery

The quotation comes from "The Rime of King William," a part of the 1087 entry in the Peterborough Chronicle, which commemorates the death of William the Conqueror. Despite the dubious poetic qualities of the work, it is a tremendously useful contemporary account of what people actually thought of the king's policies. And, when it came to forest law, that opinion was not particularly positive, as seen in this translation from the original Old English:

"He established many deer preserves and he set up many laws concerning them...
He loved the wild deer as if he were their father.
And he also decreed that the hares should be allowed to run free.
His great men complained of it, and his poor men lamented it;
but he was so severe that he ignored all their needs."

Answer: William II was killed by a stray arrow while hunting

William II, commonly known as William Rufus for his red hair, succeeded his father (William the Conqueror) in 1087. In the year 1100, he was enjoying a hunt in the New Forest with a group of nobles -- including his younger brother, Henry -- when he was hit in the lung with an arrow. The rest of the hunting party fled, leaving his body on the ground; Henry made haste to the treasury at Winchester and then to London to be crowned. The fatal spot -- or a spot much like it -- was later commemorated with the Rufus Stone.

Historians have hotly debated what really happened to the king in the woods. The official story was that it was an accident: the chronicles report that one of the huntsman, a Sir Walter Tirel, was aiming for a stag when his arrow bounced off a tree and struck the king. (Tirel wisely fled for France immediately.) Of course, the presence of Henry, who gained the throne from the accident, is suspicious -- but circumstantial. However the arrow came to lodge in the king, however, locals were sure it was just punishment for the prior king's actions in creating the preserve. As Richard Blome wrote in the 1600s, "William the Conqueror ... caused 36 Parish Churches, with all the Houses thereto belonging, to be pulled down, and the poor Inhabitants left succourless of house or home. But this wicked act did not long go unpunished, for his Sons felt the smart thereof."

Answer: The Magna Carta

The original Magna Carta was a 1215 peace agreement between the king (John) and a number of rebellious barons who wanted limitations on royal rights and prerogatives. It wasn't initially successful either as a contract or as a peace agreement, but in 1217 a modified version had a huge impact on English law. The Charter of the Forest also had an impact, of course, which started with the naming of the more famous law: the Magna Carta, or "Great Charter," was given that name to differentiate it from the narrower forestry charter.

What did the Charter of the Forest do? Well, in fitting contrast to the Great Charter, it focused more on the rights of ordinary people to access both the forest and neighboring lands. The Charter disafforested vast swaths of previously protected royal preserves, making those lands available for ordinary people to develop with fields, mills, and irrigation ditches. Poaching royal deer (hunting them without permission) was still a crime, but poachers could no longer be executed or mutilated in punishment.

Answer: Turbary: Commoners could erect water wheels on forest streams

Turbary actually refers to the right of commoners to cut pieces of turf or peat to use as fuel. (There was no general right to erect water wheels inside royal forests; this would have been a crime against the vert.) Pannage (the grazing of pigs in the forest) occurred during acorn season each year, fattening the pigs on acorns that could poison cattle. Estover rights allowed commoners to obtain quantities of wood for their own use, as kindling or firewood. Meanwhile, the idea of common pasture in a royal forest sounds a little odd, until you remember that much of the land protected as royal forest was actually grassland or heath.

These rights are still retained to the present day, with certain particular quirks that come from translating medieval law to modern practice. For example, common rights are tied to a particular plot of land (or sometimes a particular "hearth" or home), so that some houses in an area retain the rights and others do not.

Answer: Shipbuilding

For centuries, the United Kingdom's geopolitical strategy could be briefly summed up in the first line of the chorus to the song "Rule, Britannia!": "Rule Britannia! Britannia rule the waves." And, to rule the waves, you need ships, to carry freight, cannon, sailors, soldiers, and settlers. The timber needs of the Royal Navy eventually required huge naval plantations in the royal forests, and even a shipyard -- Bucklers Hard -- in the New Forest itself. And, of course, the plantations (as well as tall, straight shipworthy trees outside those zones) enjoyed new protections from common use.

The resources required by wooden shipbuilding are staggering. HMS Victory, Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar, is built from about 6000 trees, most of them oak. That's about a hundred acres of forest land to construct a single ship! Multiply that by the number of ships in a fleet, and it's clear why special plantations were needed.