Catalogue description Chief Justice of the Forests South of the Trent: Records of Forest Eyres, Charles I

By the seventeenth century forest eyres had almost ceased to be held. Those that sat were mainly for the forests of Windsor and Waltham (Essex), both close to London. William Herbert, third earl of Pembroke, was chief justice of the forests south of the Trent until his death in April 1630. He had felt little inclination to reform the administration of the forests to increase their yield at a time of rising prices and increasing royal expenditure.

Following Pembroke's death, the king placed the office of chief justice in commission for several months, until on 15 May 1631, Henry Rich, the earl of Holland, was appointed to the office. Holland, pliable, ambitious and assisted, if not led, by the attorney general, Sir William Noy, effected a major change in policy. Together they held their first forest eyre at Windsor and Bagshot for Windsor in September 1632. It firmly applied the forest laws although exercising a degree of restraint and re-extended the forest over much of Surrey.

In 1633 Noy chose the Forest of Dean for the next eyre, a forest which had not been visited for three hundred years. Before the eyre could be held Noy died, to be replaced as crown counsel by Sir John Finch, in April 1634. The local swanimote court met on 10 June and found 800 cases to be proven. The eyre opened on 10 July 1634 at the village of Mitcheldean and was adjourned to Gloucester Castle. There it reopened before Holland and his assistant judges. Finch successfully challenged the perambulation of the forest which had been accepted since 1300, using an undated document of unknown provenance. Holland and his judges then passed sentence on the presentments with only the briefest consideration, and fines amounting to some £130,000 were imposed, though many were subsequently reduced and some left unpaid.

The Gloucester eyre became the model for others. At the Waltham Forest eyre in the following October, the accepted perambulation was again challenged by the use of an undated document of dubious validity. The pattern was followed in the forest eyres in 1635 for the New Forest and the forests of Alice Holt and Woolmer, Chute, Rockingham, Salcey and Whittlewood. In 1637 there were eyres for Shotover and Stowood and Wychwood and in 1638 some of the forests were revisited. In 1639 a forest eyre was again held for Waltham Forest.

Finch's methods aroused powerful and lasting hostility. Charles I's fiscal expedients of ship money and the forest eyres were repudiated by Parliament and an act reimposing the boundaries of the forests as they were at the end of the reign of James I received the royal assent on 7 August 1641. By this date Finch had been impeached by Parliament for his activities and had fled abroad. The last forest eyres were held in the reign of Charles II.