We meet with no perambulation of the New Forest until the eighth year of Edward I.—the second ever made of an English forest—and, by comparing it with _Domesday_, we may see how, since the Conqueror’s time, the Forest had gradually taken the natural limits of the country—the Avon and the Southampton Water bounding it on the east and west, and the sea on the south, and the chalk of Wiltshire on the north.[44] The next perambulation in the twenty-ninth year of the same reign is more noticeable,[45] as it disafforests so much. It is the same perambulation which we find made in the twenty-second year of Charles II., and nominally the same which is followed to this day. To understand the cause of the difference in these perambulations, we must, in fact, thoroughly understand the great movements which had been going on during the previous years, and the increasing power of the nobles and the people. From Henry III. had been wrung the Charta de Forestâ, the terms of which had been settled before John’s death. Still, little, or scarcely anything, was put into practical effect. In 1297, however, the Earls of Hereford and Norfolk not only refused to accompany Edward I. to Flanders, but, upon their suspension from their offices, issued a proclamation, complaining that the two Charters of the liberties of the people were not observed. On the 10th of October, a Parliament was assembled, and his son passed the “Confirmatio Cartarum,” to which Edward, now at Ghent, assented. Still the two earls, from various causes, were not satisfied; and in 1298 demanded that the perambulations of the different Forests should be made. In consequence, during the summer of the next year, the King issued writs to the sheriffs, promising that the commissioners should meet about Michaelmas at Northampton.[46] This was done: and the perambulation of the New Forest was carried out in strict accordance with the provisions of the Charta de Forestâ, for the jurors who were employed expressly state that the bounds which they have determined were those of the Forest before the reign of Henry II.; and that all those places mentioned in the perambulation of 1279 and now omitted, were afforested by his successors, though they cannot say to what extent or by whom.[47] Most probably it had been reserved for John to show here, as in other cases, to what absolute madness selfishness will carry a man. After this, nothing, with one exception, of any general importance occurs.[48] Having in his prosperity incurred all the odium of attempting to revive the hated Forest Laws, in his adversity Charles I. granted as security the New Forest, and Sherwood, and other Crown lands to his creditors.[49] He had still learnt no lesson from the Ship-money, and would have pawned England itself, rather than yield to that obstinacy, which was but the other side of his weakness of character.