The Boundary Stones of the Old Forest of Waltham
ANCIENTLY almost all the County of Essex was Forest in the legal sense,
i.e., the land was subject to the Forest Laws, and was probably so
constituted by William the Conqueror and his successors. The only part
excepted was that at the N.W., beyond the Roman Stanstreet. Smarting under the
cruelty and iniquity of these royal ordinances, the barons and people from time to time
exacted from the Crown many ameliorations, which, however, were very fluctuating,
and were often withdrawn and again confirmed in different reigns, until the provisions
of the Charter of the Forest granted to the nation by Henry III. led to several
Perambulations and Inquisitions, which culminated so far as relates to our County in
the celebrated Perambulation of 1301 (29th Edward I.). This Perambulation legally
settled the confines of the Forest of Essex, or Waltham Forest, only certain lands,
old-time demesne of the Crown, being subsequently declared out of the Forest. And
so the position practically remained unchanged until October, 1654, when the whole
County was startled by the Attorney-General of King Charles I. claiming at the
Justice-seat at Stratford Langthorne a right of the Crown to revert to the boundaries
of the Forest which he had found in an ancient record of Edward I., whereby "The