Definition
"And Forests" is an archaic English legal term appearing as part of the title of two distinct administrative bodies under English law.
1. Commissioner of Woods, Forests and Land Revenues: A board established by Parliament to superintend the management of royal forests, crown lands, and associated public property. The office absorbed functions previously exercised by the chief justices in eyre of the forest — itinerant judicial officers who held jurisdiction over forest law matters — whose authority was formally transferred by Act of Parliament in 1817.
2. Commissioner of Works and Public Buildings: A separate board, sometimes referenced in conjunction with the above, charged with oversight of royal parks in and around London and other public works. The two bodies are distinct despite their occasional joint citation in legal sources.
The phrase "and forests" in historical documents almost always appears as a fragment of one of these longer administrative titles rather than as a standalone term of art.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers will encounter "and forests" almost exclusively in nineteenth-century English legal and administrative sources, typically as a truncated reference to one of the Crown land management boards. Several navigational points deserve attention.
First, the term is easily confused across sources. Bouvier's citation of "Inderwick, The King's Peace" places the term in the context of forest jurisdiction history, but the administrative board it describes is a creature of statute, not common law. Researchers following citations should distinguish between the judicial history of forest courts and the administrative history of Crown land management — two separate lineages that converged in the 1817 legislation.
Second, the 1817 Act represents a significant moment of institutional consolidation. Prior to it, the chief justices of the forest exercised a distinct judicial jurisdiction rooted in medieval forest law — a body of law governing the king's hunting preserves that operated largely outside the ordinary common law courts. The transfer of jurisdiction to the Commissioners marks the effective end of forest law as a live judicial system in England.
Third, American researchers should be alert to the fact that this term has no direct American legal counterpart. U.S. federal land and forest management developed through entirely separate statutory channels — the General Land Office, the Forest Reserve Act of 1891, and ultimately the U.S. Forest Service under the Department of Agriculture. The institutional vocabulary does not transfer. A researcher finding "and forests" in an American context is almost certainly reading a borrowed English form or a quotation from an English authority.
Fourth, secondary sources and digests from the mid-nineteenth century occasionally abbreviate board names in ways that make it unclear which commissioner or which board is being referenced. When the exact statutory authority matters, researchers should trace back to the enabling statutes rather than relying on abbreviated titles in digests or treatises.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's is the primary source offering a definition, and it is characteristically compressed. The entry treats "And Forests" as a reference point for English administrative structure without fully distinguishing the judicial history of the forest courts from the parliamentary creation of the administrative boards. Bouvier attributes the jurisdictional transfer to the "act of parliament of 1817" and cites Inderwick's "The King's Peace" as authority for the background of the chief justices of the forest — a useful lead for researchers seeking historical depth on forest jurisdiction.
What Bouvier does not do is situate the term within the broader arc of English forest law, which stretches from the Norman Conquest through the Forest Charter of 1217 (the companion document to Magna Carta), through the Tudor and Stuart periods, and into the era of parliamentary rationalization in the nineteenth century. That historical depth is not recoverable from the dictionary entry alone. Researchers needing the full institutional context should consult dedicated treatments of English forest law and Crown land administration.
No other major historical legal dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus — not Jacob's Law Dictionary, not Black's early editions — appear to carry a standalone entry for this phrase, reflecting its status as an administrative title fragment rather than a freestanding term of art.
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Jurisdictional Note
This term is exclusively English in origin and application. It has no recognized equivalent in American, Scottish, or other common law jurisdictions. American researchers encountering the term in primary or secondary sources should treat it as a reference to English Crown land administration and not attempt to analogize it to U.S. federal land management structures.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Property Law Encyclopedia: "Federal Public Lands -- Management (BLM, Forest Service, National Parks)"
The Law Mind Environmental & Energy Law Encyclopedia: "National Forest Management Act and Federal Land Management"
Note: These encyclopedia entries address the American federal land management system, which is the functional modern analogue in U.S. law, though the institutional lineage is entirely separate from the English boards described here.
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