Basic HTML Version
10
City & Village Tours: 0845 812 5000 info@cityandvillagetours.com
Foul Punishments & Fair Game
The Roman historian Tacitus recorded that the
penalty under the old German laws for someone
who dared peel the bark off a standing tree was to
have his navel cut out and nailed to the tree he had
damaged before being driven round and round the
tree until all his guts were wound about its trunk.
That never happened here but mistreating trees was
a serious matter in Saxon times. The Anglo-Saxons
knew the value of woodland. Wood replaced the
ubiquitous earthenware of Roman times for
domestic utensils and was needed for tools, building,
fuel and of course to graze food animals.
Game was essential to supplement the often meagre
yields from the open field system of farming where
whole communities collectively tended massive
open fields but harvested by household from long
strips measuring an acre a piece that were spread out
to give each family a fair allocation of the best and
worst of the soil. From the early 11
th
century there
were legal attempts to limit the taking of wood and
game from the forests by defining certain areas as
royal hunting preserves. In 1023 King Cnut had a go
at outlawing poaching on his private chases: anyone
caught red-handed would be dealt with by common
law but this was somewhat toothless in the face of
long established customs and privileges. For example
‘
fair game
’ was a custom and a privilege placed on
man to bring additional food to the table for his family
through hunting and a valid claim in an Anglo-Saxon
court case over trespass or theft could be:
“I have always hunted this land, so did my father and
so did my grandfather”.
But when the Normans came everything would change.
1066 & All That
The Norman invasion changed the English way of life
forever. The Saxon king Harold had called himself king
of the English but William the Conqueror called
himself king of England and he claimed the land itself.
About 25% of the land was acquired for William’s own
purpose and another 25% went to the church - a vital
obligation to repay Rome for their blessing of the
invasion. The rest was divided between his trusted and
loyal servants – just ten or twelve men through whom
William imposed the feudal system upon his new
kingdom. As we have seen there was already a social
hierarchy in place but one of the hallmarks of the
Norman feudal system was new laws and the legislative
innovation felt most grievously by the English was the
imposition of Forest Laws. Although the Anglo-Saxon
kings were great huntsmen they had never set aside
areas declared to be exclusively for their use and thus