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The Forest of Huntingdonshire, England.

The Forest of Huntingdonshire, or Forest of County Huntingdon, England (to literally translate the medieval abbreviated Latin used in medieval forest documentation: Foresta Comit. Hunted. ) was any area of land associated with the County removed from Common Law and placed under the body, or corpus of Forest Law by an act of afforestation.

The Medieval forest, as a legal jurisdiction, (rather than a habitat description as the Victorian definition of the term forest may imply), could be altered at any time according to the will of the Crown by acts of disafforestation or reafforestation. The subject of reconstructing the dynamic extent of a forest of the Middle Ages is thus highly complex and modern researchers must rely on available primary documentation and avoid anachronisms and the perpetuation of mistakes from secondary sources.

Despite the comprehensive Victoria County History: Huntingdonshire (V.C.H.:H), volumes published in the 1930's describing three Royal Forests in Huntingdonshire (Harthay, Sapley and Weybridge), and Bigmore stating 'the whole county lay under forest law between 1155 and 1300 in the 1970's publication 'the Bedfordshire and Huntingdonshire Landscape', it should be noted that even the editors of V.C.H.:H found the topic of afforestation challenging:

the whole subject (afforestation) is so difficult that I think it would be wiser to avoid committing ourselves in V.C.H. to any particular theory.' (V.C.H. Draft editorial notes between W.Page & I. Ladds, Brampton folder, held at the Norris Museumhttp://www.norrismuseum.org.uk/, St.Ives, Cambridgeshire, England).

Primary documentation from various sources describe a patch and fragment extent of forest law lands in the County of Huntingdonshire from the 12th to 16th centuries, rather than a county-wide matrix as reported by 20th century publications.

The source of the confusion between primary and secondary sources may derive from a 1301 AD dated disafforestation ratification (reign of King Edward I) that states that King Henry II had previously afforested the whole county (as published by 20th Century authors), although a caveat later in the same original Medieval Latin text states that King Henry II afforested the listed woods and groves of the County to the great detriment of each listed owner.

The enclosed woodland-pastures called 'hays', or 'haiis' in medieval documentation, (derived from the Old-English verb (ge)hagen, meaning an enclosed area for the protection and hunting of game, notably deer ) on the royal demesne, or Crown estate sites of Weybridge, Harthay and Sapley, Huntingdonshire, are recorded in primary documentation as being afforested prior to the reign of King Henry II, and remained as forest after 1301, when, in the reign of King Edward I, many other woods and groves in the county were disafforested.

Sapley, Harthay and Weybridge Royal hays (termed haga sites) were perambulated in 1218 and 1301, with only minor place and field-name changes recorded in the 83 year interim, suggesting that the enclosed woodland-pastures had more or less a fixed boundary throughout this time.

The Forest of Weybridge and Forest of Sapley, however, were also terms used to describe forest bailiwicks, or districts of afforested lands that took their name from these Royal haga centres, but whose jurisdiction radiated across the countryside from these cores (of likely Anglo-Saxon origin), to other areas of land, as is demonstrated in the Forest Eyre, or Forest Courts records of the 13th century.

Additional to the possible expansion and contraction of Royal Forests from the static Royal haga boundaries, privately held woods and groves could be disafforested by the Crown as income generation, as favour to loyal nobles and under political pressure from disgruntled nobility.

Thus in Huntingdonshire several precepts of King Henry I[] permit the grubbing up of woodlands (called assarting[]) by David, Earl of Huntingdon, who later became King David of Scotland[]. The localised disafforestation of woods and groves in Huntingdonshire from the 1120's onwards further supports a patch theory of Medieval forest extent.

The Ramsey Banlieuhttp://www.ramsey-town.co.uk/history.asp, a land holding of fenland[] and fen skirtland; in effect a miniature kingdom of the Benedictine Monks of Ramsey Abbey[] was quit forever of the Forest of County Huntingdon by order of King Henry I, and likely never re-afforested, further complicating attempts to reconstruct the historic dynamic extent of the Forest of County Huntingdon.

Two original Medieval sources, the Ely Coucher Book and the Ramsey Cartulary also inform us that King's Delph, an area of alder trees and reeds in the fenland between Ramsey, Peterborough and Yaxley (interestingly mostly outside the Victorian county boundary of Huntingdonshire)was afforested as part of the Forest of County Huntingdon during the minority of King Henry III[]. The subsequent destruction of the vegetation at King's Delph Forest a few decades later is recorded in forest court pleas as published in English by Turner. where it is noted the king's deer and goats were greatly affected.

Forest law operated over a jurisdiction of a diminishing scale of hunting rights that equated to land ownership, and thus in Huntingdonshire the Chase of Somersham was granted to the Bishop of Ely on certain of his lands within the Soke of Somersham, as granted by King Richard I in 1197 to the bishopric from the 'forest of county Huntingdonhttp://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=42487. The chase was an unenclosed area where the Bishop of Ely held the right to hunt large game, possibly excluding the endemic red deer, (Cervus elaphus')'[], and including the roe deer,(Capreolus capreolus'')as evidenced from primary records [].

By the 12th Century the Abbot of Ramsey enjoyed the privilege of free warren on his lands outside of the Ramsey Banlieu, within the forest of County Huntingdon, which permitted him to hunt (likely through professional hunters rather than by his own hand) lesser beasts protected by local forest law such as the hare, (Lepus europaeus).[].

Many other lords in the County enjoyed the Crown licensed right of free warren on their privately owned lands where they often introduced coneys, or rabbits, hence the frequent place-name coneygear (rabbit enclosure). Additionally many held the license from the Crown to impark land from areas protected by forest law; that is to fence off and enclose the area owned by the private landlord within the larger forest law zone (creating a park)and rear, for hunting, the game of their choice, such as the introduced fallow deer, Dama damahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallow_deer. Forest crimes recorded in Huntingdonshire do, however, record nobles encouraging the king's deer into their parks.

It remains unclear what happened to the wooded element of the woodland-pastures of the Royal Forests of the Forest of County Huntingdon, and whether they were grubbed up in the 17th century for agricultural expansion. A number of paper mills in the county do appear from the late 18th century onwards, and it is tempting, though perhaps poignant to think that the timber was processed into pulp for paper manufacture.