| Act of Parliament | |
.svg) | |
| Long title | Carta de Foresta |
|---|---|
| Citation | 25 Edw. 1 |
| Territorial extent | |
| Dates | |
| Royal assent | 1297 |
| Repealed | 1 July 1971 |
| Other legislation | |
| Amended by | |
| Repealed by | Wild Creatures and Forest Laws Act 1971 |
| Relates to | |
Status: Repealed | |
| Text of statute as originally enacted | |
| Text of the A Statute Concerning Tallage (1297) as in force today (including any amendments) within the United Kingdom, fromlegislation.gov.uk. | |
TheCharter of the Forest of 1217[1] re-established rights of access forfree men to theroyal forest that had been eroded by KingWilliam the Conqueror and his heirs. Many of its provisions were in force for centuries afterwards.[2] It was originally sealed in England by the youngKing Henry III, acting under the regency ofWilliam Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke.[3]
It was in many ways a companion document toMagna Carta.[4] The charter redressed some applications of the Anglo-NormanForest Law that had been extended and abused by KingWilliam Rufus.
"Forest"[5] to theNormans meant an enclosed area where the monarch, or sometimes another aristocrat, had exclusive rights to animals of the chase and the greenery ("vert") on which they fed.[6] It consisted not only of trees but also large areas ofcommons such as heathland, grassland, and wetlands, productive of food, grazing, and other resources.[7]
Lands became more restricted asKing Richard andKing John designated increasing areas as royal forest, off-limits to commoners. At its widest extent, royal forest covered about one-third of the land of southern England.[6] Thus, it became an increasing hardship for the common people to try to farm, forage, and otherwise use the land they lived on.[citation needed]
The Charter of the Forest was first issued on 6 November 1217 atOld St Paul's Cathedral in London[8] as a complementary charter toMagna Carta from which it had evolved. It was reissued in 1225[9] with several minor changes to wording, but cancelled in 1227 when Henry III declared his adulthood. It was joined with Magna Carta in theConfirmation of Charters in 1297.[10]
At a time when royal forests were the most important potential source offuel for cooking, heating, and industries such ascharcoal burning, and of such hotly defended rights aspannage (pasture for pigs),estover (collecting firewood),agistment (grazing), orturbary (cutting of turf for fuel),[11][page needed] this charter was almost unique in providing a degree of economic protection for free men who used the forest to forage for food and to graze their animals.[12]
In contrast toMagna Carta, which dealt with the rights of barons, it restored to the commoner some fundamental rights, privileges, and protections against the abuses of an encroaching aristocracy.[13] For many years it was regarded as a development of great significance in England's constitutional history, with the seventeenth-century jurist SirEdward Coke referring to it along with Magna Carta as the Charters of England's Liberties,[6] and SirWilliam Blackstone remarking in the eighteenth century that:
There is no transaction in the antient part of our English history more interesting and important, than … the charters of liberties, emphatically stiled THE GREAT CHARTER and CHARTER OF THE FOREST …[14]
The first chapter of the charter protected common pasture in the forest for all those "accustomed to it", and chapter nine provided for "every man to agist his wood in the forest as he wishes".[6] It added "Henceforth every freeman, in his wood or on his land that he has in the forest, may with impunity make a mill, fish-preserve, pond, marl-pit, ditch, or arable in cultivated land outside coverts, provided that no injury is thereby given to any neighbour." The charter restored the area classified as "forest" to that ofHenry II's time.[citation needed]
Clause 10 repealed the death penalty (and mutilation as a lesser punishment) for capturing deer (venison), though transgressors were still subject to fines or imprisonment.[15] Specialverderers' courts were set up within the forests to enforce the laws of the charter.[citation needed]
By Tudor times, most of the laws served mainly to protect the timber in royal forests. Some clauses in the Laws of Forests remained in force until the 1970s. Thespecial courts still exist in theNew Forest and theForest of Dean. In this respect, the charter was the statute that remained longest in force in England, from 1217 until superseded by theWild Creatures and Forest Laws Act 1971.[16]
The charter was a vehicle for asserting the values of the commons and the right of commoners against the state and the forces of commodification.[17] The Act that replaced it was about the protection of nature and administering the commodification of natural resources.[16]
To mark 800 years of the Charter of the Forest, in 2017, theWoodland Trust and more than 50 other cross-sector organisations joined forces to create and launch aCharter for Trees, Woods and People, reflecting the modern relationship with trees and woods in the landscape for people in the UK.[18]
According toGuy Standing, the charter "was not about the rights of the poor, but about the rights of the free. For its time and place, it was a radical assertion of the universality of freedom, its commonality."[4]
It is claimed that only two copies of the 1217 Charter of the Forest survive, belonging toDurham Cathedral andLincoln Cathedral. The Lincoln copy is usually on display in theDavid P J Ross Magna Carta Vault inLincoln Castle, together with the Lincoln copy of Magna Carta. A manuscript of the 1225 reissue narrowly escaped destruction in 1865 and is now available in theBritish Library (Add. Ch. 24712).[19]
A recently discovered copy of the 1300 edition of the Charter of the Forest is inSandwich Guildhall Museum Magna Charter exemplification in Kent. Another copy of the 1300 edition of the Charter of the Forest is with the Oriel College Magna Charter exemplification[20]
The charter has inspired the name of the Read-OperaThe Charter of the Forest, which deals with themes such as free people's relation to power, which were codified in one form by the original Charter of the Forest.[21]
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