wood. Both were said to be valueless to the lessee of the manor because of the
wood and pasture rights of the commoners and the Crown. The trees were
divers pollards and old decayed beech and hornbeam trees, which only
beare cropp for the. . . uses of the tenants of the said manor.
Deer
We know little of the deer population. Returns that survive for 1498 show
that the king and his household ate one red and eight fallow deer and gave away
one red and 13 fallow (67). Records of casualties suggest that there were now
more red in relation to fallow (Table 7). Poaching continued: in 1489 no fewer
than 316 deer were "devored wt swyn, and slayn wt curres, and smeten wt
arrowes, and dede of murreyn" (24).
In 1544 Henry VIII tried briefly to establish a park in Chingford Fairmead,
of which "Queen Elizabeth's Hunting-Lodge" may be a relic (20,60).
Table7. Casualties among deer, S.W. Essex Forests.
Year and reference 1495(24) 1498(67) 1595(24) 1630(24)
Red 7 8 15 11
Fallow 40 21 72 22
Timber and wood
By this time the trees were certainly systematically exploited by landowners
(or their lessees) as well as by the commoners. In 1489, for instance, Christopher
Stubbes infringed Forest Law by taking more than 350 cartloads, chiefly of
wood, from various parts of Epping Forest; it was sold mainly in London
(10,64). Part of it came from Monk Wood, which as Survey 3 shows was felled
again before 1538 and again in 1567 and 1582. The Hainault surveys show that
timber and wood were assets to the Crown as landowner. The pessimistic
opinion of the landowner's rights expressed in Survey 7 is not borne out by the
other documents.
Wood continued to be a more important product than timber. There is no
evidence that trees as a whole increased or decreased.
Pasture and common rights
Throughout this period a small trickle of court cases shows that the Forest
authorities continued to regulate grazing (10,64). In 1489 an offender was
presented for turning out one bullock more than his farm was capable of
supporting in winter — a solitary instance of the levant et couchant principle
widely applied to regulate grazing on other commons.
Grazing by landowners seems to have disappeared, and there was some
diminution of common rights. By the seventeenth century, in most manors,
39