I am unable to understand Mr. Freeman's sug-
gestion, that this Code was forged for the purpose of
sheltering the Forest legislation of the Normans under
the name of Canute. However severe Canute's laws
may have been, in prescribing the loss of the right hand
and afterwards death, for violence against the Forest
officers, and death for offences against the King's deer,
the Normans surely could find no shelter under them for
their own barbarities.
The chroniclers tell us that plucking out the eyes
was the punishment in the time of William the Con-
queror for slaying the stag, the roe, or the wild boar.
The English were "vehemently" oppressed by the
Forest extortions in the time of Henry I. ; and the
nature of the oppression is shown by the Forest law
of Richard I., that if any should offend and be convicted
in anything touching matters of hunting or of the King's
forests, full justice should be done upon them as was
done in the time of Henry the King's great-grandfather,
viz., that they should lose their eyes, and suffer mutila-
tion. The laws of Henry II. were prefaced by a similar
order, though the punishments were not specified.
But it was not only In vindication of the King's
forest rights that these savage acts were committed.
When we are told that in the time of Henry I. little dis-
tinction was made in the chastisements of slayers of stags,
and homicides, the writer brings as heavy a charge, so



THE FOREST LA WS AND COURTS. 69

far as regards cruelty, against those who authorized the
punishments of the latter, as of the former.* Nor were Sax. chron.
