The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [198]
‘Suit yourself,’ said Pride and went on his way.
The reason for his visit to the green was that young Alice Albion was there.
If there was one thing that had changed scarcely at all in the New Forest since the days of the Conqueror it was the common rights of the forest folk. Given their smallholdings and the poverty of much of the soil, this continuity was natural: the exercise of common rights was still the only way in which the local economy could work.
There were chiefly four, by name. The right of Pasture – of turning out animals to graze in the king’s forest; of Turbary – an allowance of turves, cut for fuel; of Mast – the turning out of pigs in September to eat the green acorns; and of Estovers – the taking of underwood for fuel. These were the four; although there were also some customary rights to marl, for enriching your land, and of cutting bracken as bedding for livestock.
The system by which these ancient rights were allocated, like ancient common law, was often complex and they might attach to an individual cottage; but it had been the custom to consider them as belonging to each landowner, who would claim them on behalf of himself and his tenants. The estate under which both Stephen Pride and Gabriel Furzey came belonged to the Albions. And since it would all, one day, belong to her, it was Alice, that morning, whom her father had sent, together with his steward, to collect some important information.
As he came up, Pride saw that she was sitting in the shade at the edge of the green. They had provided a table and a bench for her. The steward was standing at her side. On the table a large sheet of parchment paper was spread. She sat very upright. She wore a green riding dress and a wide-brimmed hat with a feather in it. In colouring she took after her mother. Her fair hair had a reddish tint, her eyes were more grey than blue. He smiled, thinking she looked rather fetching. He had seen this Albion girl around the place ever since she was a child. He was only seven years her senior. When she was twelve, he remembered, she hadn’t been too proud to race him on her pony. She had spirit. The Forest people liked that.
‘Stephen Pride.’ She needed no prompting from the steward and gave him a bright look. ‘What shall I write down for you?’
It was the first time, as far as anybody knew, that a complete list of all the common rights had ever been written down. They had always existed. They were in people’s memories. Any dispute in the Swainmote, as the old Venderers’ Court was often called, could always be solved by reference to the local jury, advised by the representatives of the vills. So why would anyone want to write down all this mass of local information?
As Stephen Pride enumerated the commoning rights to which his smallholding was entitled, he knew the reason very well. ‘It is’, as he had remarked to his wife the day before, ‘for our sovereign lord, the cursed king.’ And as he looked young Alice Albion in the eye now, he knew equally well, although neither of them said it, that her opinion was just the same.
If the evidence of history is anything to go by it seems clear that members of the royal house of Stuart only make good monarchs if they have been properly broken in first.
King James had. His miserable years in Scotland, where by tradition the knife was never far from any monarch’s throat, had taught him to be canny. Whatever he might believe about the divine right of kings, he never in practice pushed his English