_Forest laws._--Still greater dissatisfaction attended the king's attempt to revive the ancient laws of the forests,--those laws, of which, in elder times, so many complaints had been heard, exacting money by means of pretensions which long disuse had rendered dubious, and showing himself to those who lived on the borders of those domains in the hateful light of a litigious and encroaching neighbour. The Earl of Holland held a court almost every year, as chief-justice in eyre, for the recovery of the king's forestal rights, which made great havoc with private property. No prescription could be pleaded against the king's title, which was to be found, indeed, by the inquest of a jury, but under the direction of a very partial tribunal. The royal forests in Essex were so enlarged, that they were hyperbolically said to include the whole county.[16] The Earl of Southampton was nearly ruined by a decision that stripped him of his estate near the New Forest.[17] The boundaries of Rockingham forest were increased from six miles to sixty, and enormous fines imposed on the trespassers; Lord Salisbury being amerced in £20,000, Lord Westmoreland in £19,000, Sir Christopher Hatton in £12,000.[18] It is probable that much of these was remitted. _Monopolies._--A greater profit was derived from a still more pernicious and indefensible measure, the establishment of a chartered company, with exclusive privileges of making soap. The recent statute against monopolies seemed to secure the public against this species of grievance. Noy, however, the attorney-general, a lawyer of uncommon eminence, and lately a strenuous asserter of popular rights in the House of Commons, devised this project, by which he probably meant to evade the letter of the law, since every manufacturer was permitted to become a member of the company. They agreed to pay eight pounds for every ton of soap made, as well as £10,000 for their charter. For this they were empowered to appoint searchers, and exercise a sort of inquisition over the trade. Those dealers who resisted their interference were severely fined, on informations in the star-chamber. Some years afterwards, however, the king received money from a new corporation of soap-makers, and revoked the patent of the former.[19]