d estates as forfeited which were protected by the
statute of entails. The real owner had no remedy against this
disposition but to prefer his petition of right in chancery, or, which
was probably more effectual, to procure a remonstrance of the house of
commons in his favour. Even where justice was finally rendered to him he
had no recompense for his damages; and the escheators were not less
likely to repeat an iniquity by which they could not personally suffer.

[Sidenote: Forest laws.]

The charter of the forests, granted by Henry III. along with Magna
Charta,[366] had been designed to crush the flagitious system of
oppression which prevailed in those favourite haunts of the Norman
kings. They had still, however, their peculiar jurisdiction, though,
from the time at least of Edward III., subject in some measure to the
control of the King's Bench.[367] The foresters, I suppose, might find a
compensation for their want of the common law in that easy and
licentious way of life which they affected; but the neighbouring
cultivators frequently suffered from the king's officers who attempted
to recover those adjacent lands, or, as they were called, purlieus,
which had been disafforested by the charter and protected by frequent
perambulations. Many petitions of the commons relate to this grievance.

[Sidenote: Jurisdiction of constable and marshal.]

The constable and marshal of England possessed a jurisdiction, the
proper limits whereof were sufficiently narrow, as it seems, to have
extended only to appeals of treason committed beyond sea, which were
determined by combat, and to military offences within the realm. But
these high officers frequently took upon them to inquire of treasons and
felonies cognizable at common law, and even of civil contracts and
trespasses. This is no bad illustration of the state in which our
constitution stood under the Plantagenets. No colour of right or of
supreme prerogative was set up to justify a procedure so manifestly
repugnant to the great charter. For all remonstrances against these
encroachments the king gave promises in return; and a statute was
enacted, in the thirteenth of Richard II., declaring the bounds of the
constable and marshal's jurisdiction.[368] It could not be denied,
therefore, that all infringements of these acknowledged limits were
illegal, even if they had a hundred fold more actual precedents in their
favour than can be supposed. But the abuse by no means ceased a