The legal conception of a forest was thus that of a definite territory within which the code of the forest law prevailed to the exclusion of the common law. The ownership of the soil might be in any one, but the rights of the proprietor were limited by the laws made for the protection of the king's wild beasts. These laws, enforced by fines often arbitrary and excessive, were a great grievance to the unfortunate owners of land within or in the neighbourhood of the forest. The offence of "purpresture" may be cited as an example. This was an encroachment on the forest rights, by building a house within the forest, and it made no difference whether the land belonged to the builder or not. In either case it was an offence punishable by fines at discretion. And if a man converted woodlands within the forest into arable land, he was guilty of the offence known as "assarting," whether the covert belonged to himself or not.
The hardships of the forest laws under the Norman kings, and their extension to private estates by the process of afforestment, were among the grievances which united the barons and people against the king in the reign of John. The Great Charter of King John contains clauses relating to the forest laws, but no separate charter of the forest. The first charter of the forest is that of Henry III., issued in 1217. "As an important piece of legislation," said Stubbs,[3] "it must be compared with the forest assize of 1184, and with 44th, 47th and 48th clauses of the charter of John. It is observable that most of the abuses which are remedied by it are regarded as having sprung up since the accession of Henry II.; but the most offensive afforestations have been made under Richard and John. These latter are at once disafforested; but those of Henry II. only so far as they had been carried out to the injury of the landowners and outside of the royal demesne." Land which had thus been once forest land and was afterwards disafforested was known as _purlieu_--derived by Manwood from the French _pur_ and _lieu_, i.e. "a place exempt from the forest." The forest laws still applied in a modified manner to the purlieu. The benefit of the disafforestment existed only for the owner of the lands; as to all other persons the land was forest still, and the king's wild beasts were to "have free recourse therein and safe return to the forest, without any hurt or destruction other than by the owners of the lands in the purlieu where they shall be found, and that only to hunt and chase them back again towards the forest without any forestalling" (Manwood, _On the Forest Laws_--article "Purlieu").