The _Charta de Foresta_, constructed in Henry the Third's reign, contains some curious information about woodland customs. We learn that "any archbishop, bishop, earl, or baron, coming to the King at his command, and passing through the forests, might take and kill one or two of the King's deer, by view of the forester if he were present; if not, then he might do it upon the blowing of a horn, that it might not look like a theft. The same might be done when they returned."[1] Courts called Swainmotes were held thrice yearly--one fifteen days before Michaelmas, a second about the Feast of St. Martin, and a third fifteen days before St. John Baptist's Day. At the same time the cruel punishments for offences against the forest laws were lessened in rigour. Thenceforth no man was punished with death or mutilation for illegally hunting, but if found taking venison was fined heavily. If he were unable to pay, he was imprisoned for a year and a day, and then discharged upon pledges; but if unable to find any surety, was exiled. Footnote 1: Reeves's _English Law_.] The chief officers were known as foresters, verderors, woodwards, and agisters. Each verderor had the liberty of taking a tree out of Birkland or Bilhagh; but this privilege seems to have been abused, since in later years the officers were found to choose the best timber available, and in William the Third's reign the favour was withdrawn. Until the sixteenth century the forest seems to have been infested with wolves: we read that one, Sir Robert Plumpton, in Henry the Sixth's time, held land called "wolf-hunt land" at Mansfield Woodhouse, seven or eight miles away, by service of horn-blowing to chase or frighten away these creatures. In 1635, from a survey taken by royal command, it was discovered that the forests contained 1367 red deer, 987 of these being "rascalds", or ill-conditioned. A few years before, the district had been ravaged by fire, and a contemporary writer describes the conflagration as one such as was "never knowne in menes memory; beinge four mille longe and a mille and a halfe over all at once". Later the gentleman tells how "ridinge on his way through the forest homeward, he saw a greate herde of faire red deere, and amonst them 2 extreordanory greet stages, the which he never saw the like".