the Meadow of Council,—­a place long consecrated by public opinion, as that wherein the quarrels and wars which arose in the English nation, when divided into kingdoms or factions, had been terminated from the remotest times.  Here it was that King John, on the 15th day of June, in the year of our Lord 1215, signed those two memorable instruments which first disarmed the crown of its unlimited prerogatives, and laid the foundation of English liberty.  One was called the Great Charter; the other, the Charter of the Forest.  If we look back to the state of the nation at that time, we shall the better comprehend the spirit and necessity of these grants.

Besides the ecclesiastical jurisprudence, at that time, two systems of laws, very different from each other in their object, their reason, and their authority, regulated the interior of the kingdom:  the Forest Law, and the Common Law.  After the Northern nations had settled here, and in other parts of Europe, hunting, which had formerly been the chief means of their subsistence, still continued their favorite diversion.  Great tracts of each country, wasted by the wars in which it was conquered, were set apart for this kind of sport, and guarded in a state of desolation by strict laws and severe penalties.  When, such waste lands were in the hands of subjects, they were called Chases; when in the power of the sovereign, they were denominated Forests.  These forests lay properly within the jurisdiction of no hundred, county, or bishopric; and therefore, being out both of the Common and the Spiritual Law, they were governed by a law of their own, which was such as the king by his private will thought proper to impose.  There were reckoned in England no less than sixty-eight royal forests, some of them of vast extent.  In these great tracts were many scattered inhabitants; and several persons had property of woodland, and other soil, inclosed within their bounds.  Here the king had separate courts and particular justiciaries; a complete jurisprudence, with all its ceremonies and terms of art, was formed; and it appears that these laws were better digested and more carefully enforced than those which belonged to civil government.  They had, indeed, all the qualities of the worst of laws.  Their professed object was to keep a great part of the nation desolate.  They hindered communication and destroyed industry.  They had a trivial object, and most severe sanctions; for, as they belonged immediately to the king’s personal pleasures, by the lax interpretation of treason in those days, all considerable offences against the Forest Law, such as killing the beasts of game, were considered as high treason, and punished, as high treason then was, by truncation of limbs and loss of eyes and testicles.  Hence arose a thousand abuses, vexatious suits, and pretences for imposition upon all those who lived in or near these places.  The deer were suffered to run loose upon their lands; and many oppressions were used with relation to the