CHAP. VIII. penetrable character of the border district between the two kingdoms at this period of our history; and as we proceed we shall find it continued so for many centuries. A.D. 755. p. 38. p. 132. P. 16. All Bohn's The Anglo-Saxons, like the Romans, had no taste for making roads through such a forest, particularly as, when made, they would not be secure from the attack of a lurking foe without felling the trees on either side some seventy yards, the length of an arrow's flight. There was therefore very little (if any) communication between the men of Kent and the South Saxons, and this only by a circuitous route. Kent, as in the days of Cæsar, continued the common landing place from the Continent for this part of England. Near the close of the eighth century we find mention made of the Forest, and as it supports what I have already advanced respecting its extent, I will here refer to it. In A.D. 755 Sigebert invaded and took possession of the West Saxon kingdom. He is described by all historians as a man of inhuman cruelty, and he was soon driven from his throne; but by the exertions of his friends he was allowed to retain Hampshire. His cruel heart, however, remained unchanged, and he murdered a long-tried and faithful adherent named Cumbra, and fled into the wood Anderida, called by William of Malmesbury "the recesses of wild beasts." A swineherd of the murdered Cumbra discovered him in his hiding-place, and recognising him slew him. All the early writers record this event. William of Malmesbury says Hampshire was the province he was allowed to retain. Henry of Huntingdon tells us he fled into the great wood called Andredswald. Ethelwerd says he was driven into the wilds of Andred, and so fled from thicket to thicket until he was at last slain by a herdsman A. S.C., p. 336. at a place named Pryffetes-flodam, which the Saxon Chronicle calls Privets-flood [Privett, Hampshire.] Edns. Camden also, under the head of Sussex, refers to this event, as well as his contemporary Lambarde, who, in his usual quaint style, when speaking of "The Weald," tells us in his Perambulation, "In this wood (Andred) Sigbert, a king of Westsex, was done to death CHAP. VIII. by this occasion following. A.D. 755. "About the year after the Incarnation of Christ, 755, this Sigbert P. 190. succeeded Cuthred his cousin in the kingdom of the Westsaxons, and was so puffed up with the pride of his dominion (mightily enlarged by the prosperous successes of his predecessor) that he governed without fear of God or care of man, making lust his law, and mischief his minister. Whereupon one Cumbra (an Earl and counsellor), at the lamentable suit of the Commons, moved him to consideration. But Sigbert, disdaining to be directed, commanded him most despitefully to be slain. Hereat the nobility and commons were so much offended, that, assembling for the pupose, they with one assent deprived him of his crown and dignity, and he (fearing worse) fled into the wood, where, after a season a poor hogherd (sometime servant to Cumbra) found him (in a place which the Saxon histories call Prifetsflode) and knowing him to be the same that had slain his master, slew him also without all manner of mercy. "The history of this hogherd presenteth to my mind an opinion that some men maintain touching this Weald, which is, that it was a great while together in manner nothing else but a desert and waste wilderness, not planted with towns or peopled with men, as the outsides of the shire were, but stored and stuffed with herds of deer and droves of hogs only. Which conceit, though happily it may seem a paradox, yet in mine own fantasy it wanteth not the feet of sound reason to stand upon." He then proceeds to give his reasons, which I shall have occasion to refer to hereafter; they would be out of place here. Before, however, I close this little episode, I will recommend the reader to refer to a map of Hampshire, where he will find "Privett," in the Hundred of Fawley, north-west of Petersfield, which must have been near the western confines of the forest. As to the herds of deer which Lambarde speaks of, we have very little reliable information; but of the droves of hogs with which it was "stored and stuffed," and of the mast by which they were fed, I now propose to speak. The oak flourishes more luxuriantly throughout this district than in any other part of Kent, and in all ages it has been looked upon as the most important of the trees of the forest. Sacred and profane history (as I have Ezek., vi., 13. already remarked), long anterior to even druidical worship, and down to the very landing of St. Augustine, alike Canterbury, abound with evidence of the importance attached to p. 17. CHAP. VIII. it. Faiths of the Prof. Donovan on Human Food, The great age it will attain has always attracted veneration for it. Authors have calculated with some ingenuity, and with considerable show of truth, that many old oaks, now or lately existing, had been growing for centuries before the Christian era. Seven hundred years make no extraordinary period in their existence. An Acorns were used by man in his uncivilised state as food, and materially assisted in supplying his wants, while the honey dew of its leaves he drank as mead. It was even celebrated as the mother and nurse of man. improvement in diet has ever kept pace with an improvement in the cultivation of the soil. The man who labours hard to produce the best animals and the best cereals soon learns to partake of them; and the swineherd, we have just seen, is sent into the forest with the hogs to feed them on the mast which once contributed to the sustenance of man. Swine, I have always understood, do less mischief in our woods than any other description of stock, especially where acorns and beech mast are plentiful; for in turning up the ground in search of their food, they bury the acorns and mast, which vegetate, and are reputed hardier and better rooted than those trees which are raised and transplanted. I will here remark that the Romans were very partial to pork; indeed, if we are to believe their historians, they Vol. ii., p. 122. were epicures in swine flesh; so much so, that their censors published edicts prohibiting the use of certain porcine delicacies at suppers. The Anglo-Saxons were equally partial to pork. They reared extensive herds of swine, and attached vast importance to the acorns and beech mast. They did not, we shall find, estimate the value of their trees as we should now do, by their girth, but by their circumference and the number of hogs that could lie under them; and there can be no doubt that they depended very materially for subsistence Kemb., vol. i., upon the herds of swine, oxen, and sheep fed on the different wealds which then covered so large a proportion of the island. From the early documentary history of our forest, it would P. 38. Prof. Donovan on Dom. Eco nomy, p. 123. appear that herds were originally turned at large into it, CHAP. VIII. under the charge of swineherds, in quest of food, without any mark, limit, or restriction; and that the feeding and pasturage were all in common. This was the ordinary practice for ages. We read that in Italy those who formerly had the care of swine never enclosed them in separate pastures nor followed them, as was the practice of the Greeks, but went before them, occasionally sounding a horn. We are told that the swine were capable of distinguishing their own horn, that their exactness in this was almost incredible; that when different herds got mixed, the conductors went to different sides and sounded their horns, on which the herds separated and ran with such alacrity to the sound of their respective horns, that no violence could arrest their career. CHAP. IX. CHAPTER IX. THE FIRST CHARTERS RELATING TO THE FOREST. BEFO EFORE I treat of the forest as belonging to the sovereign for the time being in right of his crown, and "not acknowledging any private lord or proprietor," I would remark that we do not find in Kent any trace of a written law, or charters, or grants, anterior to the sixth century. An unwritten law or custom respecting the tenure or holding of all the lands in Kent is supposed to have existed from the earliest period of Kentish AngloSaxon history, which became the Common Law of the district, and was known as the custom of Gavelkind, of which I shall hereafter speak. I will commence my documentary evidence with a royal "Landboc," or donation, of Ethelbert II. of Kent, in A.D.762. If I had begun with an earlier charter, I might have found some difficulty in satisfying the reader of the identity of the property referred to, and this would have detracted from the object I have in view, which is to supply a simple and, if possible, intelligible history of this once dark spot of the earth. Availing myself of the late Mr. Kemble's valuable work, theCodex Diplomaticus," I propose to introduce very brief translations from it of those portions of the documents which bear upon my subject, and unless these extracts are read with care, I fear I shall not be able to convey a correct idea of what I have undertaken to explain. Ethelbert II., it will be remembered, held Kent with |