Terry Jones' Medieval Lives by Alan Ereira Page B

this ever happening. The majority of them just threw away their wooden crosses on a lonely stretch of road and melted away into the woods to take up a new identity or join the many bands of outlaws that plagued the country.
    THE GREENWOOD REFUGE
    The outlaw poet contrasts the ‘false dealing’ and ‘bad law’ from which he is fleeing with the fairness of nature:
    For this reason I shall stay in the woods, in the pleasant shade;
    there is no false dealing there, nor any bad law ,
    in the wood of Belregard, where flies the jay ,
    and the nightingale sings daily without ceasing.
    â€˜Robin Hood and the Monk’ begins with a strikingly similar evocation of the woodland idyll:
    In summer, when the woods do shine ,
    And leaves be large and long ,
    It is full merry in fair forest
    To hear the birdies song ,
    To see the deer draw to the dale ,
    And leave the hills so high ,
    And shelter in the leaves so green ,
    Under the green wood tree.
    The notion of the ‘greenwood’ as an Arcadian idyll runs through the outlaw legends. Today we associate it with forests, but ‘forest’ was a technical term in the Middle Ages and stood for something that was far from idyllic. It is not at all obvious why the ‘green wood’ should have been described as a place of sanctuary from the law.
    FOREST LAW
    One of William’s first acts as conqueror of England was to create ‘The New Forest’. This didn’t mean he planted a lot of nice trees so people could enjoy a picnic in the shade. What he was doing was ear-marking a vast tract of land as his own personal hunting-ground. This is what the Norman word ‘forest’ meant. Whether there were trees or not wasn’t really the point. The ‘forest’ was wherever ‘Forest Law’ applied, and ‘Forest Law’ was not something anyone wanted to live under.
    Towns and villages could be, and were, destroyed, and every animal and tree became royal property. The forest was administered by royal officials with draconian powers, who replaced the community as denouncers before the court.
    The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says of William:
    He made many deer-parks, and he established laws therewith; so that whosoever slew a hart, or a hind, should be deprived of his eyesight. As he forbad men to kill the harts, so also the boars; and he loved the tall deer as if he were their father. Likewise he decreed respecting the hares that they should go free. His rich men bemoaned it, and the poor men shuddered at it.
    The poor men shuddered at it because they were now under a set of laws that had nothing to do with common law, under which William destroyed their towns, villages and churches.
    Hunting was an activity reserved by law for the nobility. It was, of course, their main occupation apart from warfare. Nevertheless, no king needed all the designated land for hunting; there was simply too much of it. It formed an alternative kingdom, from which he drew revenues and profits directly. Every monarch from William I to Edward I was denounced at one time or another for extending the royal forest and the abuse of the power associated with the law. This became a perpetual grievance, with kings forced to back off between bouts of afforestation of open country.
    Forest law was deeply resented as a form of tyranny, and records show that entire peasant communities living in royal forests were often brought to trial for concealing offenders, protecting them, and refusing to help catch them or take part in investigations. The greenwood of the poems appears to represent a notional, pre-Norman land where officers of the Church and king were, in effect, foreigners at the mercy of the English, who lived by their own ancient codes. It is a nostalgic fiction, which serves as a standing reproach to those in power. The outlaw poet again:
    You who are indicted, I advise you, come to me ,
    to the green wood of Belregard, where there is no entanglement ,
    just wild