RIGHT OF ENGLISH KINGS TO FORESTS.

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the law, because the law doth make him a king. And as he is the head and most excellent part of the body of the commonweal, so is he also, through his governance, the preserver, nourisher, and defender of all the people, being the rest of the same body. And by his travails, study, and labours they enjoy not only their lives, lands, and goods, but all that ever they have besides in rest, peace, and quietness. The king, by his watch and diligent care, doth defend and keep every man's house in safety; his labour doth maintain and defend every private man's pleasure and delight. So that even as the head of a natural body doth continually watch and with a provident care still look about for the safety and preservation of every member of the same body, even so the king, being the head of the body of the commonweal, doth not only continually carry a watchful eye for the preservation of peace and quietness at home amongst his own subjects, but also to preserve and keep them in peace and quietness from any foreign invasion; for which cause the laws do attribute to him all honour, dignity, prerogative, and pre-eminence; which prerogative doth not only extend to his own person, but also to his possessions, goods, and chattels. AND THEREFORE, in respect to his continual care and labour, the laws do allow to the king, amongst many other privileges, to have his places of recreation or pastime wheresoever he will appoint."

Hence arose the necessity of preventing the cutting down of certain forests, the fixing of their boundaries, the making of laws for the due preservation of the game they contained, and the planting of new forests in situations more convenient than the old. Out of these circumstances have grown the conservation as forests of certain woodland districts in England, under peculiar laws and management, and all invested, from their connexion with the sports, pastimes, and often superstitious fears of the ancient Kings, Lords, and Commons of this country, with a considerable amount of interesting historical, traditionary, and legendary lore. To give an account generally of these forests, their history, their associations, and their traditions, as well as particularly of the various kinds of trees they contain, is the object sought to be attained in this work.

CHAPTER II.

ENGLISH FORESTS IN THE DAYS OF THE BRITONS, ROMANS, SAXONS, AND NORMANS.

HERE can be little doubt that at an early period the whole of our

Tisland was covered with forests of marshes; and further, that

this period was not much earlier than the first Roman invasion. It is true, the authority of Geoffrey of Monmouth, Bishop of St. Asaph in the twelfth century, is rather opposed to such a statement; for if we are to believe him, Britain was settled and civilised, and the City of New Troy or London built, about ten centuries before the birth of Christ, by Brutus, a hero from the Trojan war, and from whom it is alleged our country takes its name. The good old bishop's work is doubtless very valuable, especially to poets like Shakspeare, who found in it the materials for his powerful drama of King Lear; but its authority in a historical point of view is more than doubtful. But even supposing all his wonderful narrative to be correct, admitting that Britain was a highly civilised country at the very time that Solomon was building the Temple at Jerusalem, still it is just possible, and history has many a page to confirm it, that during the lapse of so many centuries the people went back into barbarism, and the country into its primitive state of forest, marsh, and moorland.

Julius Cæsar is a more reliable authority than the old St. Asaph Bishop. The stern, direct Roman soldier soon found out by experience what British towns and forests were; and he has described them with forcible truth. The only parts of England where the people could be said to lead a settled life, when the Romans came, were along the south coast, where agriculture was in some degree attended to, and where there were several towns, inhabited chiefly by traders, who carried on the traffic between Britain and the continent. The interior, we are told, was one great, horrid forest; and Cæsar says, with quiet contempt, "A town among the Britons is nothing more than a thick

THE DRUIDS IN ENGLISH FORESTS.

29

wood fortified with a ditch and rampart, to serve as a place of retreat against the incursions of their enemies." Strabo, in describing a British town, says: "Forests were the only towns in use among them, which were formed by cutting down a large circle of wood, and erecting huts within it, and sheds for cattle." Again, though the ancient Britons seem to have made no regular divisions of the country, yet they applied special names to certain ranges of forest. Thus the present Berkshire was formerly completely covered with a forest, called by the Britons Berroc, from which the shire takes its name. In Warwickshire there is at this day a district called Arden, which was formerly in the forest of that name (the word 'Arden,' in fact, being the British word for a forest); and there can be little doubt that that forest extended right across England, including what we now call the forests of Dean, Sherwood, &c.

But, during the time of the Britons, the forests of England were not only useful as affording means of subsistence and a secure retreat from an enemy, but they were also devoted to the most sacred purposes of religion. "The Druids," says Hume, "practised their rites in dark groves or other secret recesses; and in order to throw a greater mystery over their religion, they communicated their doctrines only to the initiated, and strictly forbade the committing of them to writing, lest they should at any time be exposed to the examination of the profane vulgar. Human sacrifices were offered among them [in huge colossi, says Cæsar, of osier twigs, into which they put men alive, and setting fire to them, those within expire amid the flames]; the spoils of war were often devoted to their divinities; and they punished with the severest tortures whoever dared to secrete any part of the consecrated offerings. These treasures they kept in woods and forests, secured by no other guard than the terrors of their religion." Groves of oak were more especially preferred by the Druids; and oak branches were invariably used in all their religious ceremonies. According to some writers, their name was derived from the oak, which in old British or Celtic is Derw. For the mistletoe they had also great veneration, and cut it from the oak at the beginning of a new year with great and imposing religious ceremonies. The most minute, and apparently the most accurate, description of this ceremony is that given by Pliny (book xvi. chap. 44). He says, "The Druids hold nothing more sacred than the mistletoe and the tree on which it grows, provided it be an oak. Therefore they choose solitary groves containing no trees but oaks ; nor do they perform any ceremonies without the branches or leaves of this tree. Indeed, whatsoever they find growing to or upon an oak

they take to be sent from heaven, and look upon it as a certain sign that their god has made choice of that particular tree for himself. But it is a thing very rarely to be met with ; and when it is found, they resort to it with great devotion. In these ceremonies they principally observe that the moon be just six days old, with which they begin the computation of their months and years, and of that period which with them is called an age-that is, thirty years complete. And they choose the sixth day, because they reckon the moon is then of a considerable strength when she is not as yet half full; and they call the mistletoe by the name of all-heal (omnia sanantem). The sacrifice and a festival entertainment being prepared under the oak, they bring thither two white bulls, whose horns are then, and not till then, tied. This done, the priest, habited in a white vestment, climbs the tree, and with a golden pruning-knife cuts off the mistletoe, which is carefully received in a white woollen cloth by those who attend below. They then proceed to kill the beasts for sacrifice, and make their prayers to their god, that he would bless this his own gift to those to whom they shall dispense it. They have an idea that a decoction of the mistletoe is a cure of sterility, and that it is a sovereign antidote against all sorts of poison."1

Though, on the one hand, we may shudder at the cruel and bloody nature of the Druidical religion, and, on the other, pity the superstitions

1 The following curious note respecting the mistletoe occurs in one of the editions of Evelyn's Sylva, dated 1786 :-"The mistletoe, instead of rooting and growing in the earth like other plants, fixes itself and takes root on the branches of trees. It spreads out with many branches, and forms a large bush. It is commonly found upon the white thorn, the apple, the crab, the ash, and maple, but is rarely seen upon the oak; which last kind, as Mr. Ray well observes, was chiefly esteemed in medicine, owing to the superstitious honours which the ancient Druids of this island paid to that plant when gathered there. This is a parasitical plant, and is always produced from seed. Some of the ancients called it an excrescence on the tree, growing without seed; which opinion is now fully confuted by a number of experiments. It is the opinion of some, that it is propagated by the mistletoe thrush, which feeding upon the berries, leaves the seeds with its dung upon the branches of the respective trees where the plant is commonly found. Others say, that as the berries are extremely glutinous, the seeds frequently stick to the beaks of those birds, which being rubbed off upon the branches of trees, they become inoculated, as it were, and take root. In the same manner the mistletoe may be propagated by art; for if the berries, when full ripe, be rubbed upon the smooth part of the bark of almost any tree, they will adhere closely, and produce plants the following winter. In the garden now belonging to Mr. James Collins, of Knaresbrough, are many large plants of the mistletoe, produced in this manner upon the dwarf apple-tree. Of mistletoe we have only one species growing in Europe, viz. viscum (album) foliis lanceolatis obtusis, caule dichotomo, spicis axillaribus, Lin. Sp. Plant. 1451. Mistletoe with blunt spear-shaped leaves, forked stalks, and spikes of flowers rising from the wings of the stalks. Viscum baccis albis, C. B. P. 423. Mistletoe with white berries."