Forest laws in England and Normandy in the twelfth century
Judith A. Green, University of Edinburgh
In: Historical Research, Volume 86, Issue 233, pages 394–407, August 2013
DOI: 10.1111/1468-2281.12003
ABSTRACT:
One of the oldest ideas about the Norman conquest is that William the Conqueror introduced into England from Normandy the legal concept of ‘foresta’, land where hunting and the environment in which it took place were protected by draconian laws. However, the medieval forest laws were not imposed on a blank canvas, and a combination of different factors, such as earlier extensive royal hunting rights, the king’s will, the application of forest law to land ‘outside’, which was organized in manors and assessed for geld, and the status of escheated land as temporary royal demesne; all worked towards a great expansion of the afforested area. In England a great deal of non-royal demesne was under forest law, whereas in Normandy ducal forests were broadly speaking ducal demesne. In England the competing interests of royal sport and revenue and those of the political elite combined with population growth pressured to make the forests a toxic political issue in a way not paralleled in Normandy.
The article is part of a collection of papers presented at a conference in Copenhagen in 2011 organised in a collaboration between three digitisation projects: “Early English Law“, “Nordic Medieval Laws” and “Relmin”.
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Read also about the context of the article in “Medieval Law”