The Express.
London, England, 1849-10-25 00:00:00

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GAME LAWS.

A remarkable anecdote, preserved be one of the
contemporary h'storians, tlustratkit the temper in
which the forest laws were administered, and mly a;
I.lLit relieve tee gravity of our subjEvt. Fifty Saxon
yeomen were accused of having killed and eaten
deer. Tney denied the charge, and evidence,
it appears, was not fortbcommg spinet them.
The Saxon en,tom of ordes.l, as is well known.
_ _

had been in nee anciently, whecever the accused
chose to *Neil to supernatural witness of their inno-
cence. This was not so here ; but the Norman judges,
. .

who derided the ordeal, choir+ in the wanton-m-6 of

cruelty to force them to it, in its severest application,
as a preliminary chastisement before inflicting the
extreme sentence. Oa three successive days, the
fifty accused men were compelled to handle red-
hot iron, yet. according to the legend, their
flesh was mtraculonslypreserved, without scathe or
singe. Tne terrified judges hastened to William,
told him of the prodigy, and implored him to appease
God by releasing the victims. The king is re ported
to have answered fiercely, "What then? Gods co
judge of such matters: to judge these men is my
business."

Whether this impious vaunt was carried into exe-
cution—whether, in sober fact, it was ever uttered
—we say not ; but mention the story, to
show the abhorrence of the Saxons fur

the system of forest law. It were much
to be wirhed that we had copies extant of the Earliest
laws of the Conqueror and his sons •, but, wanting
there, we know that they were, this braoch of them,
excessively rigorous. While human life was vilely
cheap the life of the den was eearly eheriAted by the
tyrant " who loved wild beasts as if he had been their
father." The same brutes then were the faster-
brethren of Rufus, whose laws were even harsher
than his father's, making the killingof a deer a capital
crime. In an age of slavery it is rider to be a brute
than a man.

Imagination may delineate, what the chronicle
very briefly suggests, the desolminn of homes and
destitution of families, the fields in waste, the cottages
in ruin, the people evicted, outcast, without place of
shelter, or source of food, consumed with hunger, dis-
ease, and stifled indignation, shrinking from the in-
sults of the forsigners, envying the beasts n hich had
supplanted them, which sprang through the leafy
glades, protected from the hand► of starving men by
the terrible bin of the law.

Such wu the game law, its primal type, and the
circumstances of its first introduction in merry Eng-
land of the olden time. We shall now see by what

•
process and degrees it was mitigated ; and by-and-
bye, in whet respects its evil yet remains.
Like other personal rights of the subjea, the re-
laxation of the game law was wrested from the sove-
reign, by the combination of barons and commonalty.
Our whole history exhibits, in every period of pro-
gressive reform, a result of some car. unction or con-
flict of political interests, which alternately all.cd
king with people, or aristocracy with peo-
ple, against the other estate. now the crown,
now the peerage, working out the enfranchisement
of the many, w::om royalty and aristccrecy have
sought in diff,rent times to conciliate, by an affected
protection purchasing their support. So the barons,
when they prevailed in diminishing the despotic
power of their sovereign, won ascendancy for them-
selves, and gave Magna Charts to the people. So,
from the hand of Henry 111. they extorted the charter
of the forest.
A long contention it kid been, since the Conquest,
between the monarchy, established in the contusion
of a transition pericd by the genius and energy of
William on one side, and the restless Normau chide on

the other, impatient of the aggrandisement of one
who owed Ins dominion to their pewees, and who
had upraised himself, on their toile and dangers, from
the rode leadership of his military comrades, to the
haughty sovoreigoity over dependent vessels. Re-
bellions and conspiracies expressed their discontent.l
Oi eof their grievances was the game law. " They
were irritated by it," says 'fhierry, " wishing the
right to the possession of English game to be made
commit to all who had assisted in conquering the
English soil." But the king persisted in
retaining the sole and exclusive monopoly of
the chase, which ho had invented, as we
saw, not merely to gratify his own taste for the
pastime, but chiefly to debar the Saxons from the use
of arms and the freeman's exercise of hunting; and
lest assemblages for popular insurrection might be
made in the forests, under pretext of hunting, he de-
creed that permission to hunt should not belong abso-
lutely even to his Norman or noble followers, but
should be a privilege, derivable from royal grant, and
revocable at his will.
Thus it was, that under the forest laws, while the
Saxon yeomanry a ed peasantrygroaned and perished,
the Norman aristocracy fretted and complained. On
all ranks and classes, the oppression lay with a stress
more or less galling, And, is the thirteenth century,
they together strove successfully, and got some relict.
The charter of the forest was granted in 1225, the
ninth year of Henry 111. This, one of the most
ancient statutes existing on record, contains about
twenty clauses, terse and pithy, as the style of legis
lation in that age was. It proves that the game and
forest question was then an issue most zealously dis-
puted. The successors of the Conqueror had
made still further aggressions in this respect.
It was John who laid an interdict on the
winged as well as the four-footed creation ;
and he also extended the vast reserves appertaining
to the crown; so that he was forced, in the 47th sec-
tion of Magna Charta, to concede " that all the lands
which had been afforested in his time should be im-
mediately disafforested." To recover these lends, by
the way, was an important object of the popular
party. Stephen also was induced to promise that the
[forests which had been superadded, since the death of
William 11., should be " rendered up in quiet to the
churches and the kingdom." And, in this " Charter
of the Forest," which we have now before
us, Henry 111. m kes a similar promise with
respect to all " forests made by King Richard
our uncle, or King John our father, until our
first coronation ;" while with reference to the forests
made "by King Henry our grandfather," he d -
clams that they shall be " viewed by good and lawful
men," and if any land have been taken more than his
own domain, to the hurt of tho owner, it shall be
disafforrested.
The fact, that these promises needed such reitera-
tion, shows how little the royal word was worth, and
warrants our suspicion, that much of the crown es-
tates, unrighteously seized, was never restored, but
retained in violation of these solemn engagements.
The readers of the Daily News have recently had
their attention drawn to the miemaeagement and
waste of this immense property. 11l was it acquired :
ill has it been administered. The Saxons believed the
New Forest accursed for the crimes of its planters.
We are not credulous of old monkish fables; but it is
no wonder that where the seeds were sown by rapa-
cious violence, profligate dishonesty has wasted the
Meta
To revert to the charter of 1225, some of its provi-
lions manifestly tend only to the convenience of the
mobility and lords of the land ; some protect the in-
terests of fretholdeos and tenants dwelling on the
blest borders; but others enunciate general princi-
ples, affecting the personal rights of all men. For in-
stance, the following :
" No man from henceforth shall lose either life cr
member for killing of our deer ; but if any man
be taken or convicted for killing oar venison, he shall
make a grievous fine, if he have anything whereof ;
land if be have nothing to lose he shall be imprisoned
for a year and a day •, and *After, if he can find suffi-
cient sureties, he shall be delivered; and if not be
shall abjure the realm of England."
"Every freeman shall have within his own woods
eyries of hawks, sparrow-hawks, falcons, eagles,
herons, and shall have also the honey that is found
within his own woods."
One of the r ctions of this charter is too curiously
characteristic of the ego to be omitted. It allows
any " archbishop, bishop, earl, or baron, coming
to us at our commandment" (attending his
lordship's parliamentary duties) if he pass through
a forest, to kill ono or two deer. If no ranger of
forester be near, the noble lord or right reverend pre-
late is enjoined to blow a horn, "that he seem not to
steal our deer." We should like to see Henry of
Exeter availing. himself of this permission. Bat
bishops were, in those times, often accomplished
huntamen. The crown is entitled, at the death of
every bishop, to have his kennel of hounds, or a com-
position in lieu thereof; and, according to Cowles,
Auckland-park, and other great demesnes, were
formerly held of the Bishop of Durham by such ser-
vice/ as this " Upon his great hunting expedi-