Charter of the Forest

{{Infobox UK legislation

| short_title = Charter of the Forest

| type = Act

| parliament = Parliament of England

| long_title = Carta de Foresta

| year = 1297

| citation = 25 Edw. 1

| territorial_extent = {{ubli|England and Wales|Ireland}}

| royal_assent = 1297

| repeal_date = 1 July 1971

| amendments = {{ubli|Criminal Statutes Repeal Act 1827|Criminal Statutes (Ireland) Repeal Act 1828|Criminal Law (India) Act 1828}}

| repealing_legislation = Wild Creatures and Forest Laws Act 1971

| status = Repealed

| original_text = https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pst.000017915496&seq=304

| use_new_UK-LEG = yes

| UK-LEG_title = A Statute Concerning Tallage (1297)

}}

File:Forest-charter-1225-C13550-78.jpg]]

The Charter of the Forest of 1217({{langx|la|Carta de Foresta}} or {{lang|la|Charta Forestæ}}) re-established rights of access for free men to the royal forest that had been eroded by King William the Conqueror and his heirs. Many of its provisions were in force for centuries afterwards.[http://info.sjc.ox.ac.uk/forests/Carta.htm Henry III's Charter of the Forest: facsimile and translation] It was originally sealed in England by the young King Henry III, acting under the regency of William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke."William Marshal earl of Pembroke, ruler of us and of our kingdom" is mentioned by name.

It was in many ways a companion document to Magna Carta.{{Cite book|last=Standing|first=Guy|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5iyFDwAAQBAJ|title=Plunder of the Commons: A Manifesto for Sharing Public Wealth|date=29 August 2019|publisher=Penguin UK|isbn=978-0-241-39633-9|pages=25|language=en|oclc=1083358125}} The charter redressed some applications of the Anglo-Norman Forest Law that had been extended and abused by King William Rufus.

History

"Forest"A term derived from the Latin "foris", a door or gate. to the Normans meant an enclosed area where the monarch, or sometimes another aristocrat, had exclusive rights to animals of the chase and the greenery ("vert") on which they fed.Geraldine van Buren, "Take Back Control: A new Commons Charter for the twenty-first century is overdue, 800 years after the first": in Times Literary Supplement, 10 March 2017, pp. 23–25. It consisted not only of trees but also large areas of commons such as heathland, grassland, and wetlands, productive of food, grazing, and other resources.{{Cite news|url=https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2019/09/12/the-alternatives-to-privatisation-and-nationalisation|title=The alternatives to privatisation and nationalisation|date=12 September 2019|newspaper=The Economist|access-date=10 November 2019|issn=0013-0613}}

Lands became more restricted as King Richard and King John designated increasing areas as royal forest, off-limits to commoners. At its widest extent, royal forest covered about one-third of the land of southern England. Thus, it became an increasing hardship for the common people to try to farm, forage, and otherwise use the land they lived on.{{cn|date=November 2019}}

The Charter of the Forest was first issued on 6 November 1217 at Old St Paul's Cathedral, LondonRothwell, Harry English Historical Documents 1189–1327 (1995) p. 337 as a complementary charter to Magna Carta from which it had evolved. It was reissued in 1225Rothwell, Harry English Historical Documents 1189–1327 (1995) p. 347 with several minor changes to wording, but cancelled in 1227 when Henry III declared his adulthood. It was joined with Magna Carta in the Confirmation of Charters in 1297.Rothwell, Harry English Historical Documents 1189–1327 (1995) p. 485

At a time when royal forests were the most important potential source of fuel for cooking, heating, and industries such as charcoal burning, and of such hotly defended rights as pannage (pasture for pigs), estover (collecting firewood), agistment (grazing), or turbary (cutting of turf for fuel),George C. Homans, English Villagers of the Thirteenth Century, 1941.{{page number|date=November 2020}} this charter was almost unique in providing a degree of economic protection for free men who used the forest to forage for food and to graze their animals.{{Cite web|url= http://info.sjc.ox.ac.uk/forests/Carta.htm |title=Forests and Chases: Henry III's Charter of the Forest|work= St John's College Oxford|access-date=7 May 2010}}

In contrast to Magna Carta, which dealt with the rights of barons, it restored to the commoner some fundamental rights, privileges, and protections against the abuses of an encroaching aristocracy.{{Cite web|url= http://info.sjc.ox.ac.uk/forests/Carta.htm |title=Forests and Chases: Henry III's Charter of the Forest|work= St John's College Oxford|access-date=7 May 2010}} For many years it was regarded as a development of great significance in England's constitutional history, with the seventeenth-century jurist Sir Edward Coke referring to it along with Magna Carta as the Charters of England's Liberties, and Sir William Blackstone remarking in the eighteenth century that:

{{quote|There is no transaction in the antient part of our English history more interesting and important, than … the charters of liberties, emphatically stiled THE GREAT CHARTER and CHARTER OF THE FOREST …William Blackstone, {{Cite book|url= https://hdl.handle.net/2027/njp.32101073365205?urlappend=%3Bseq=297 | title=Tracts, chiefly relating to the antiquities and laws of England | access-date=7 August 2018| publisher=Oxford | date=1771-11-30 | hdl=2027/njp.32101073365205?urlappend=%3Bseq=297 }} (Oxford 1771) p. 283.}}

File:Medieval forest.jpg.]]

The first chapter of the charter protected common pasture in the forest for all those "accustomed to it", and chapter nine provided for "every man to agist his wood in the forest as he wishes". It added "Henceforth every freeman, in his wood or on his land that he has in the forest, may with impunity make a mill, fish-preserve, pond, marl-pit, ditch, or arable in cultivated land outside coverts, provided that no injury is thereby given to any neighbour." The charter restored the area classified as "forest" to that of Henry II's time.{{cn|date=November 2019}}

Clause 10 repealed the death penalty (and mutilation as a lesser punishment) for capturing deer (venison), though transgressors were still subject to fines or imprisonment.cl 10 read, "No one shall henceforth lose life or limb because of our venison, but if anyone has been arrested and convicted of taking venison he shall be fined heavily if he has the means; and if he has not the means, he shall lie in our prison for a year and a day{{nbsp}}..." Special verderers' courts were set up within the forests to enforce the laws of the charter.{{cn|date=November 2021}}

Development

By Tudor times, most of the laws served mainly to protect the timber in royal forests. Some clauses in the Laws of Forests remained in force until the 1970s. The special courts still exist in the New Forest and the Forest of Dean. In this respect, the charter was the statute that remained longest in force in England from 1217 until superseded by the Wild Creatures and Forest Laws Act 1971.{{cite book |last1=Standing |first1=Guy |title=Plunder of the Commons |date=2019 |isbn=9780141990620 |pages=23|publisher=National Geographic Books }}

The charter was a vehicle for asserting the values of the commons and the right of commoners against the state and the forces of commodification.{{cite book |last1=Standing |first1=Guy |title=Plunder of the Commons |date=2019 |isbn=9780141990620 |pages=1–23|publisher=National Geographic Books }} The Act that replaced it was about the protection of nature and administering the commodification of natural resources.

To mark 800 years of the Charter of the Forest, in 2017, the Woodland Trust and more than 50 other cross-sector organisations joined forces to create and launch a Charter for Trees, Woods and People, reflecting the modern relationship with trees and woods in the landscape for people in the UK.{{cite web|url=http://treecharter.uk|title=The Charter for Trees, Woods and People|access-date=25 July 2017}}

Significance

According to Guy Standing, the charter "was not about the rights of the poor, but about the rights of the free. For its time and place, it was a radical assertion of the universality of freedom, its commonality."

Surviving copies

It is claimed that only two copies of the 1217 Charter of the Forest survive, belonging to Durham Cathedral and Lincoln Cathedral. The Lincoln copy is usually on display in the David P J Ross Magna Carta Vault in Lincoln Castle, together with the Lincoln copy of Magna Carta. A manuscript of the 1225 reissue narrowly escaped destruction in 1865 and is now available in the British Library (Add. Ch. 24712).{{cite web|last1=Harrison|first1=Julian|website=Medieval manuscripts blog|title=How The Forest Charter Was Saved From Destruction|url=http://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2015/06/how-the-forest-charter-was-saved-from-destruction.html|access-date=12 July 2017|language=en}}

A recently discovered copy of the 1300 edition of the Charter of the Forest is in Sandwich Guildhall Museum Magna Charter exemplification in Kent. Another copy of the 1300 edition of the Charter of the Forest is with the Oriel College Magna Charter exemplification{{cite news|newspaper=The Guardian|title=£10m Magna Carta found in council archives. Expert says the discovery of 1300 edition of the historic document raises hopes that there are more than the 24 copies currently known about in existence|author=Press Association|authorlink= PA Media |date=8 Feb 2015|url= https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/feb/08/10m-magna-carta-found-in-council-archives}}

In popular culture

The charter has inspired the name of the Read-Opera The Charter of the Forest, which deals with themes such as free people's relation to power, which were codified in one form by the original Charter of the Forest.{{Cite web|url=https://www.thecharteroftheforest.com/|title=The Charter of the Forest|website=The Charter of the Forest|language=en-US|access-date=10 January 2020|archiveurl= https://web.archive.org/web/20200223023455/https://www.thecharteroftheforest.com/about-the-read-opera/|archivedate=23 February 2020}}

References

Bibliography

GC Homans, English Villagers of the Thirteenth Century (1941)
H Rothwell, English Historical Documents 1189–1327 (1995)
P. Linebaugh, The Magna Charta Manifesto (2008)

External links

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00771y0 BBC Radio 4 "The Things We Forgot to Remember," Series 2 Episode 4, from 6:15 onwards]
{{cite web|url=https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-great-charter-and-charter-of-the-forest|title= The Great Charter and Charter of the Forest|website=British Library|accessdate=9 May 2022}}
{{cite journal|url=http://www.insightturkey.com/the-magna-carta-manifesto/book-reviews/135|title=The Magna Carta Manifesto (Review)|first=Jeffrey Edward|last=Green|journal=Insight Turkey|date=2010|volume=12|number=2}}
{{cite web|url=http://info.sjc.ox.ac.uk/forests/Carta.htm|title= The Charter of the Forest of King Henry III|website=St John's College, Oxford|accessdate=9 May 2020}}
{{cite web|url=http://www.magnacartacanada.ca/the-charter-of-the-forest/|archiveurl= https://web.archive.org/web/20201106210444/http://www.magnacartacanada.ca/the-charter-of-the-forest/|archivedate=6 November 2020|first=Carolyn|last=Harris|title=Charter of the Forest|website=Magna Carta Canada|date=17 December 2013}}
{{cite web|url=http://treecharter.uk/|title=Charter for Trees, Woods and People|author=The Woodland Trust|date=2017}}
[https://www.lincolncastle.com/content/magna-carta Lincoln Castle Magna Carta (and Charter of the Forest) display page]