Historians have never been properly grateful for that perpetually inquisitive student in medieval dialogues whose chief claim to fame is that he elicited bursts of wisdom from the ever-patient master. To him we owe this rather curious definition of the English royal forest as formulated by the master in Richard fitz Nigel's Dialogue of the Exchequer written about 1178:The King's forest is a safe abode for wild animals, not all of them but only the woodland ones, and not everywhere, but in particular places suitable for the purpose. That is why it is called “forest” (foresta), as though the e of feresta (i.e. a haunt of wild animals, ferarum statio), were changed into o.Fortunately, the master had already discussed the essential point that the forest was an area of special jurisdiction subject to a special law:The whole organization of the forests, the punishment, pecuniary or corporal, of forest offences, is outside the jurisdiction of the other courts, and solely dependent on the decision of the King, or of some officer specially appointed by him. The forest has its own laws, based, it is said, not on the Common Law of the realm, but on the arbitrary legislation of the King; so that what is done in accordance with forest law is not called “just” without qualification, but “just, according to forest law.”Although modern scholarship suggests that the arbitrary nature of forest law in the thirteenth century was exaggerated, there can be no question that it had a bad reputation among contemporaries, who raised the cry that it placed the protection of wild beasts above that of men.
XXVI.—A View of the Ancient Limits of the Forest of Wychwood