FOREST, in Law, is defined by Manwood, "a certain territory or circuit of woody grounds and pastures, known in its bounds as privileged for the peaceable being and abiding of wild beasts and fowls of forest, chase, and warren, to be under the king's protection for his princely delight; bounded with unremoveable marks and meres, either known by matter of record or prescription; replenished with beasts
of venery or chase, and great covets of vert for succour of the said beasts; for preservation whereof there are particular laws, privileges, and officers belonging thereunto." Forests are of such antiquity in England that, excepting the New Forest in Hampshire, erected by William the Conqueror, and Hampton Court, erected by Henry VIII., there is no record which makes any certain mention of their erection, though they are often alluded to by various writers, and in several of our laws and statutes. Ancient historians tell us that New Forest was raised by the destruction of twenty-two parish churches, and many villages, chapels, and manors, for the space of thirty miles together, which was attended with divers judgments on the posterity of William I., who erected it; for William Rufus was there shot with an arrow, and before him Richard, the brother of Henry I.; and Henry, nephew to Robert, the eldest son of the conqueror, was, like Absalom, suspended by the hair of the head in the boughs of the forest. The Conqueror, says the 'Saxon Chronicle,'—"loved the red deer as if he had been their father;" and he is said to have visited the slaughter of one of these animals with greater severity than murder itself. This king is said to have possessed in different parts of England no fewer than sixty-eight forests, besides an immense number of chases and parks.
Legally, a forest can only be in the hands of the sovereign; for the sovereign alone has power to grant a commission to be justice in eyre of the forest. A chase differs from a forest in being capable of being held by a subject, in being of smaller extent, and subject to the common law, and not to the forest laws. A chase also may be comprised within a forest.