4
EPPING FOREST.
whole was strictly subject to the Forest laws and
regulations for the time being; and the interests
of the cultivator, of the commoner who turned
his cattle out to graze on the Forest, of the owner
of the soil, and of the public, were subordinate to
the sporting rights of the Crown.
Previous to the time of Henry VIII, nearly the
whole of the ownership of the soil, subject to the
sporting rights of the Crown, was vested in the
powerful religious bodies of that day; such as the
Abbey of Waltham, of which some account is
given at page 62, which had received them as
grants from various monarchs, pious or rapacious,
in return for benefits of a spiritual or substantial
character; but other rights and favours were also
constantly granted to ecclesiastics, among whom
the Abbess of Barking seems to have been espe-
cially favoured, as the following extract shows:
"We command you to allow the Abbess of
Barking her reasonable estovers in her wood at
Hainault for her firing, her cooking, and her brew-
ing, if she has been accustomed so to do in the time
of our Lord King John our father; also to permit
the same abbess to have her dogs to chase hares
and foxes within the bailiwick if she was accus-
tomed to have them in the time of our aforesaid
father." At the time of the Reformation these
rights reverted, or were reannexed, by the Crown.
Later on they were again granted to various
persons for services received, with the exception of
those which related to the section which lay to
the north-east of the river Roding, called the Forest
of Hainault, which had belonged to the Abbey of
Barking, and which unfortunately, as I shall pre-
sently show, remained in the hands of the Crown.