In proof of the last point a singular and quite novel piece of evidence can be adduced. Hitherto but little attention has been given by general, county, or local historians with regard to England’s old forests, or royal wastes appropriated to sport, which were often of vast extent and to be found in almost every shire. There is, however, a very considerable store of documents, from King John’s time downwards, dealing with the exceptional and somewhat severe forest legislation, wherein are recorded the forest offences that were brought before the Justices at the occasional sittings for Forest Pleas, and also at the constantly recurring smaller courts of Swainmote or Woodmote. With England’s forests the religious houses were most intimately associated. There was not a single forest wherein several monasteries had not particular and exceptional privileges conferred in early days by royal charters--privileges that brought their inmates or their servants into the closest connexion with these great game-stored preserves. Over the great wild stretch of Peak Forest, Derbyshire, or certain parts of it, the abbeys of Basingwerk, Beauchief, Darley, Dernhall, Dieulacres, Leicester, Lillenhall, Merivale, Roche, and Welbeck, together with the priories of Kingsmead, Launde, and Lenton all had rights. When Forest Pleas were held and chartered claims had to be put in, it almost invariably happened that those of monasteries far exceeded those of the laity. Not only had the surrounding monasteries, and sometimes those at a distance, particular rights, but, as a rule, there was at least one religious house within the forest bounds, to say nothing of the granges of more distant convents. Thus there was Ivychurch Priory in the centre of the Wilts Forest of Clarendon, Flaxley Abbey in Dean Forest, Rufford Abbey and Newstead Priory in Sherwood, Tutbury Priory in Needwood, Beaulieu Abbey in the New Forest, Pipewell Abbey in Rockingham Forest, or Chertsey Abbey in the Forest of Windsor. These rights, for the most part, referred to wood, sometimes permitting the felling of all timber necessary for their conventual buildings, churches, and farmsteads and fences, but more usually applying to undergrowth or dead wood for fuel. One house might have the right to send a horse and cart daily for a load of fuel, and another to do the same once a week or fortnight. The agistment of cattle at certain seasons and the pannage of swine were granted here and there, whilst venison-rights were by no means unknown. Occasionally the abbot or superior had certain rights granted him over the game or deer in a chase bordering on a royal forest, as was the case with the abbot of Whitby and Pickering Forest--a grant of much higher value than the far commoner right of free-warren, which covered hares and rabbits, and which pertained to a variety of manors. But such a grant as this did not imply that the abbot sent his monks hunting through the chase.