ABSTRACT
The first difficulty which confronts the student of the English forest is to be found in the ambiguity of the terms which are used to describe it. In its proper sense the word "forest" denotes either the whole area in which the king's game is protected by a special law, or a separate administrative district within it. The status of the royal parks is more difficult to define, A large number were certainly subject to forest law. The forest law was being constantly mitigated by more or less comprehensive exemptions. The commonest of these was exemption from the regard enjoyed by a large proportion of the woods in each forest. Hostility to the forest system grew rapidly in the next twenty years, no doubt as a result of the greater strictness shown. It was an important factor in the political crisis at the end of the thirteenth century.
