A Treatise of the Laws of the Forest, Wherein is declared not onely those Laws, as they are now in force, but also the original and beginning of Forests; and what a Forest is in its own proper Nature, and wherein the same doth differ from a Chase, a Park or a Warren [...] Also a Treatise of the Pourallee [...] Collected, as well out of the Common Laws and Statutes of this Land; As also out of sundry learned ancient Authors, and out of the Assises of Pickering and Lancaster [...] Whereunto are added the the Statutes of the Forest [...] Never, heretofore Printed for the Publique. Third Edition corrected, and much inlarged.

Bookseller Notes

Expanded edition of the classic treatise on forest laws, with contemporary annotations. John Manwood (d. 1610), gamekeeper of Waltham Forest, sought in this treatise to revive the forest laws which had 'growen cleane out of knowlege in most places'. His treatise, which begins with earliest statutes instituted under King Cnut, has become probably the most-cited secondary source on forest law, and is quoted approvingly by Blackstone. It first appeared (c. 1592), as A Brefe Collection of the Lawes of the Forest, followed by an enlarged edition, with twenty chapters, which was published in 1598 as A Treatise and Discourse of the Lawes of the Forrest. The present version is a reprint of the posthumous edition of 1615, which was enlarged still further enlarged by the insertion of five chapters on forest courts taken from the private edition, but omitted in 1598.The two pages of neat manuscript notes to the flyleaves here suggest ownership by either a scholar of law or someone facing their own legal challenges; they make reference to various key aspects of Manwood's text, with page numbers. A pleasing copy of a landmark legal text.