But it does not follow that the English Forest laws
were entirely derived from them. In a country like
England, full of woods and wastes, and governed by
Kings who delighted in hunting, Forest regulations may
very well have had an independent origin ; and that such
regulations existed here at a very remote period is shown
by a passage in the Forest law attributed to Canute, which
j™' is certainly of great antiquity, and which speaks of a

regulation as then existing ab antiquo.
■^'' '• ^'" The author of the Dialogues of the Exchequer says,

with truth, that the rules of the Forests, and the punish-
ments or acquittals of offenders in them, were kept wholly
apart from the other judgments of the kingdom, and
submitted to the will of the King alone, or of some
adviser of his specially deputed for the purpose. He
adds that the laws of the Forests were considered to rest
upon the voluntary institution of princes. In this view

* Alcuin, the favourite instructor of Charlemagne and his Court,
was an Englishman, who had been sent by Offa, King of the Mercians,
Cait. Sax. I. on an embassy to Charlemagne ; and the latter was in correspondence
m- with Oifa in the latter part of the 8th century.
THE FOREST LA WS AND COURTS. 55

he is apparently followed by the Bishop of Chester, who 1^^^^^^^^°
observes that the legal enactments of Henry II. were ^oi. 2. cxviii.
