Page "Royal forest" Paragraph 3

Afforestation, in particular the creation of the New Forest, figured large in the folk history of the " Norman Yoke ", which magnified what was already a grave social ill: " the picture of prosperous settlements disrupted, houses burned, peasants evicted, all to serve the pleasure of the foreign tyrant, is a familiar element in the English national story ....

The extent and intensity of hardship and of depopulation have been exaggerated ", H. R. Loyn observed.

Forest law prescribed harsh punishment for anyone who committed any of a range of offences within the forests ; by the mid-17th century, enforcement of this law had died out, but many of England's woodlands still bear the title Royal Forest.

At that time, the practice of reserving areas of land for the sole use of the aristocracy was common throughout Europe during the medieval period.

There is no evidence of the Anglo-Saxon monarchs creating forests.