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The Forest Charter and the Scribe: Remembering a History of Disafforestation and of How Magna Carta Got its Name

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 March 2018

Alison Million
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Abstract

In medieval England ‘forest’ did not have the same meaning as it does today but defined large areas of land governed by severe forest laws which Magna Carta had failed to temper. Instead, these were addressed two years later in the Charter of the Forest 1217 which, although a companion charter to the 1217 Magna Carta reissue, remains relatively unknown. This article by Alison Million explores the Charter of the Forest; its history, impact and legacy and considers why and to what extent its memory has been lost in time. It explains how the Charter of the Forest, and the pen of an unwitting scribe, contributed towards the name Magna Carta; a name which has just seen its octocentenial anniversary.

Keywords

legal historyMagna CartaForest Charter
Type
Feature Article
Information
Legal Information Management , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , March 2018 , pp. 4 - 9
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2018. Published by British and Irish Association of Law Librarians 

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References

Footnotes

1 National Archive document reference C 54/19, m.11d.  The Latin text is in RLC, p. 377.

2 Magraw, Daniel B; Martinez, Andrew; Brownell II, Roy E. ed. (2014) Magna Carta and the rule of law. American Bar Association, 9.

3 Even Sir Edward Coke in his Second Institutes was unaware of the derivation of the name Magna Carta. Lord Irvine of Lairg (2003) The sprit of Magna Carta continues to resonate in modern law. (2003) LQR 119 at 227.

4 White, A.B. (1915) The Name Magna Carta. 1915 30 EHR 472 and 1917 32 EHR 554.

5 That Magna Carta subsequently became “great” in its own right even by the end of the 13th century is of course acknowledged. See e.g. Carpenter, David (2015) Magna Carta / translated with a new commentary by David Carpenter. Penguin Classics, 6.

6 Mynors, Dr. Charles (2011) 2ed The Law of Trees, Forests & Hedges. Sweet & Maxwell, 388.

7 Ibid.

8 Rowley, Trevor (1997) Norman England. English Heritage, 128.

9 New Forest National Park Authority (2007) History of the New Forest National Park 1 The Medieval Forest.

10 Pryor cites Colchester as an example.  Pryor, Francis (2010) The Making of the British Landscape. How We Have Transformed the Land, from Prehistory to Today. Allen Lane.

11 Hudson, John (2012) The Oxford History of the Laws of England. Volume II 871–1216. Oxford University Press, 458.

12 That forest law was hated is widely documented. However some historians have asserted that forest law was more a nuisance than anything else e.g. “It was probably no more irritating to settled farmers than the equally crude behaviour of the hunting squires in our own day”.  Hoskins, W.G. (1955) The Making of the English Landscape. Hodder and Stoughton Ltd. with illustrations, 73. “There is reason to doubt whether the administration or incidence of forest law was really so harsh as has been asserted”. Hart, Cyril (1971) The Verderers and Forest laws of Dean. David & Charles, P. 21Google Scholar.

13 12 Carpenter, David (1990) The Minority of Henry III. Methuen, 62.

14 Bartlett, Robert (2000) England Under the Norman and Angevin Kings 1075 – 1225. Clarendon Press Oxford, 170Google Scholar.

15 Ibid.

16 The 1212 Eyre amassed £4,486 but as lands had been disafforested under Richard and John before 1212 it was proportionately much higher than earlier Eyres. Young, Charles R. (1979) The Royal Forests of Medieval England Leicester University Press, 67.

17 Ibid. 14.

18 Of the many texts and glossaries available explaining terms relating to medieval forest law I have found the following to be the most accessible: http://www.academia.edu/8366688/1217_Lincoln_Charter_of_the_Forests. It also appears in the following eBook by Dr. Erik Grigg https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lincoln-Magna-Carta-account-Lincolns-ebook/dp/B00XWV7L9C.

19 Holdsworth, W.S. (1931) 5ed. History of English Law Vol. I. Methuen & Co., 95Google Scholar.

20 Van Bueren QC, Professor Geraldine (2015) More Magna than Magna Carta: Magna Carta's Sister – The Charter of the Forest in Hazell, Robert and Melton, James (ed.) (2015) Magna Carta and its Modern Legacy . Cambridge University Press, 198CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Enderby, Robert and Sands, Tim (2015) The Charter of the Forest. Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=lincolnshire+wildlife+trust+charter+of&ei=UTF-8&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-003.

22 Pryor, Francis (2010) op. cit. 290.

23 British Library (2014) English Translation of Magna Carta [online] https://www.bl.uk/magna-carta/articles/magna-carta-english-translation. (Accessed 9/2/18.)

24 Linebaugh, Peter (2008) The Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberties and commons for all. University of California Press, 31Google Scholar.

25 The 1215 Magna Carta: Clause 44, The Magna Carta Project, trans. H. Summerson et al. http://magnacartaresearch.org/read/magna_carta_1215/Clause_44  (Accessed 12 January 2018.)

26 Clause 44 of the Magna Carta 1215 became Clause 2 of the Charter of the Forest 2017. See http://info.sjc.ox.ac.uk/forests/Carta.htm. This translation of the Charter of the Forests as issued in 1217 is that which appears in Rothwell, Harry (ed.), English Historical Documents, Vol. 3, 1189–1327 (London, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1975)Google Scholar, No. 24, at pp. 337–40.

27 Crook, Dr. David in BBC Radio 4 (Tues 1 Aug 2017) Making History The Charter of the Forest http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08zc1z7.

28 Young, Charles R. (1979) The Royal Forests of Medieval England Leicester. University Press, 67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 The Charter of the Forest of King Henry III http://info.sjc.ox.ac.uk/forests/Carta.htm and see 23 supra for note on translation. (Access 9/2/18)

30 Carpenter, Professor David. Revival and Survival in Breay, Claire and Harrison, Julian (ed.) (2015) Magna Carta: law, liberty, legacy. The British Library, 80Google Scholar.

31 The Charter of the Forest of King Henry 111 op. cit

32 Ibid.

33 Ibid.

34 Ibid.

35 Carpenter, Professor David. Revival and Survival in Breay, Claire and Harrison, Julian (ed.) (2015) Magna Carta: law, liberty, legacy. The British Library, 80Google Scholar.

36 Blackstone, William (1759) The Great Charter and the Charter of the Forest with other Authentic Instruments, to which is prefixed an Introductory Discourse Containing the History of the Charter. (Oxford at the Clarendon Press)Google Scholar.

37 Ibid. i.

38 Robinson, Nicholas A. (2014) The Charter of the Forest: Evolving Human Rights in Nature in Magraw, Daniel B; Martinez, Andrew; Brownell II, Roy E. ed. (2014), 311.

39 Van Bueren QC, Professor Geraldine (2015) op. cit. 201.

40 Van Bueren QC, Profession Geraldine (2013) Socio-economic rights and a Bill of Rights – an overlooked British tradition PL 2013, Oct, 825.

41 Professor David Carpenter however writes in a letter to The Guardian of 9 November 2017 that, “The key concessions in the charter were granted to “free men” and thus deliberately excluded the unfree who formed a large proportion of the population”.

42 Van Bueren QC, Professor Geraldine (2015) op. cit. 201.

43 Portillo, Michael in OpenLearn (4 December 2006) The Things we Forgot to Remember. Was Magna Carta really the document which defined our freedoms? The Open University http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/social-economic-history/was-magna-carta-really-the-document-which-defined-our-freedoms.

44 Wild Creatures and Forest Laws Act 1971 c.47 S.(2).

45 Allen, J.G. (2016) Magna Carta and its Modern Legacy CLJ 2016, 75(2), 426–429 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 Van Bueren QC, Professor Geraldine (2013) op. cit. 826.

47 Robinson, Nicholas A. op. cit. (2014), 315 note 18.

48 Nicholas A. Robinson, University Professor for the Environment & Kerlin Distinguished Professor of Environmental Law Emeritus, Address at the Lincoln Charter of the Forest Conference, Bishop Grosseteste University: The Charter of the Forest: Evolving Human Rights in Nature (Sept. 22–25, 2017), http://digitalcommons.pace.edu/lawfaculty/1075/.

49 Bennett, Dr. Nicholas see 35 supra.

50 Grigg, Dr. Erik https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lincoln-Magna-Carta-account-Lincolns-ebook/dp/B00XWV7L9C

51 Blackstone, William (1759) The Great Charter and the Charter of the Forest with other Authentic Instruments, to which is prefixed an Introductory Discourse Containing the History of the Charter (Oxford at the Clarendon Press), xlv.

52 John Fardell, Deputy Registrar and Chapter Clerk to the Cathedral wrote to the Records Commission on 5 March 1800 advising it of Lincoln's original Magna Carta. Historians believe that the Charter of the Forest might have been discovered simultaneously. I am grateful to Dr. Erik Grigg, Learning Officer at Lincoln Castle, for providing this  information.

53 Copies of later issues of the Charter of the Forest have been found. For example 1225 original copies of both the Magna Carta and Charter of the Forest are currently held in Sandwich Museum in Kent.

54 Robinson, Nicholas A. (2014) Ibid. 314.

55 Robinson, Nicholas A. (2014) Ibid. 321.

56 Portillo, Michael 45 supra.

57 Van Bueren QC, Professor Geraldine (2013) op. cit. 827.

58 Van Bueren QC, Professor Geraldine (2015) op. cit. 203.

59 White, A.B. (1915) The Name Magna Carta. 1915 30 EHR 472 and 1917 32 EHR 554.

60 HL273 Written Question by Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer on 4 June 2015 and answered by Lord Faulks on 18 June 2015.

61 I am very grateful to Matt Larsen-Daw, Project Lead for the Charter for Trees, Woods and People at the Woodland Trust https://treecharter.uk/for providing this statement.

62 Blackstone, William (1759) op. cit. L.

63 Lock, Alexander and Sims, Jonathan (2015) Invoking Magna Carta: Locating Information Objects and Meaning in the 13th to 19th Centuries. Legal Information Management, 15 (2015) p.75.

64 Linebaugh, Peter (7 November 2017) A Keynote Address, Delivered in the State Rooms at the House of Commons https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/11/20/on-the-800th-anniversary-of-the-charter-of-the-forest/

65 https://treecharter.uk