ASSARTING 53
after the Conquest, the dwellers on the fringes of the great area
preserved for the King in Derbyshire were nibbling away acres
here and there, and bringing them into cultivation. Since this"
was mainly without permission, whenever the Court of the Forest
was held such offences had to be presented, and thus it is that
we find out what was going on. The evidence fills many pages
when extracted from the Rolls, and only a few examples can be
given here. In one area (Hayfield) during the first twenty-six
years of Henry Ill's reign some 140 acres in various small
parcels had been taken into cultivation, while at Combes in the
first eleven years 160 acres had been occupied by some twenty
men. Or again, during a brief period the abbots of Basingwork,
who had rights in the forest, had assarted no less than 291 acres
in various places.1 All these encroachments on the King's rights
were presented to his officials, and we may well wonder what
was happening on the manors of lesser lords when this could
happen on the King's demesnes, and with the terrors of the
Forest Law hanging over the wrongdoers.
Another form of forest encroachment was called "purpres-
ture", a term difficult to define because it was somewhat dif-
ferently applied to different forests. More usually, as was the
case at this eyre (1251), it signified the building of a house or
homestead within the forest bounds. Since the last pleas of 1216
one hundred and thirty-one persons h?<l built new houses with-
out warrant, and were therefore in mercy, and liable to fines. In
almost a like number of cases, namely one hundred and twenty-
seven, new houses had been raised in the King's demesnes with
the license of the bailiff.2
If we turn from a forest area to a less highly protected part of
the country we see much the same was happening there. The
detailed researches of Mr H. J. Hewitt on medieval Cheshire
have shown how much was being done there in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries. He writes :
An increasing population had already necessitated some enlarge-
ment of the bounds of cultivation, and throughout the period under
consideration the work of reclamation was being gradually pushed
forward. The work proceeded slowly and laboriously, and some of it
1 J. P. Yeatman, Feudal History of Derbyshire, in, 237ff.
a V.C.H. Derby, n, 403. For detailed evidence, see Yeatman, op. tit.