Definition
De viridi et venatione (Latin: "of vert and venison") is a term from the old English forest law designating the two principal subject matters regulated and protected under the royal forest system: the living vegetation of the forest (vert) and the wild game kept therein (venison). Together, these two elements formed the core of what the forest law existed to preserve and protect for the sovereign's exclusive benefit. Offenses against either — cutting or damaging the greenery that sheltered the game, or taking or injuring the deer and other protected animals — were triable in the special forest courts and subject to penalties distinct from the ordinary common law. The phrase functioned less as a standalone cause of action and more as a comprehensive label for the entire subject matter jurisdiction of forest law.
Common Confusion
The terms "vert" and "venison" carry their modern everyday meanings into historical legal texts and can mislead researchers. In forest law, "vert" did not mean the color green — it designated all woody vegetation within the forest bounds capable of bearing green leaves, including trees, undergrowth, and thickets that provided cover and food for game. "Venison" did not refer narrowly to deer meat; it encompassed all beasts of the forest and chase (deer, boar, and in some formulations, lesser game) whether living or dead. Reading these terms through a modern lens distorts the breadth of the legal protections involved.
Why It Matters in Research
This phrase is a gateway term for navigating the body of medieval and early modern English forest law. Researchers encountering it in primary sources — particularly in commentaries on the Carta de Foresta (1217) and the later forest statutes — should understand that it signals jurisdictional boundaries: matters touching de viridi et venatione were withdrawn from the ordinary common law courts and reserved to the forest eyre, the swainmote, and related forest tribunals. Blackstone's treatment (2 Bl. Com. 71–72) and Coke's Institutes (4 Inst. 289) are the most accessible entry points for the English secondary tradition, but both write from a period when the forest courts were already in decline, which shapes their framing.
The term appears almost exclusively in historical and antiquarian legal sources. It will not appear in modern statutory or case law. Researchers working on property rights in waste and common lands, royal prerogative over natural resources, or the historical development of game law will find de viridi et venatione sitting at the intersection of all three. It is also relevant to historians of environmental and land-use regulation, as the forest law system represents one of the earliest formal frameworks for restricting land use and resource extraction in English legal history.
A practical research trap: Burrill cites the Carta de Foresta under "Cart. de Forest. 9 Hen. III," meaning the forest charter issued in the ninth year of Henry III's reign (1217). This is a distinct instrument from Magna Carta, though the two were often reissued together. Conflating the two is a common error in secondary sources. The forest charter, not Magna Carta, is the primary constitutional source for the vert and venison protections.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's entry is brief but accurate in its essentials: the phrase identifies the twin pillars of forest law protection and cites the three standard authorities — the Carta de Foresta, Coke's Fourth Institute, and Blackstone's Commentaries. Burrill correctly points the reader forward to the individual entries for Vert and Venison, where the substance is more fully elaborated. The entry does not explain the forest court machinery (the eyre of the forest, the swainmote, the attachment court) through which offenses against vert and venison were prosecuted, nor does it distinguish the gradations of offense — a gap that Manwood's Treatise of the Forest Laws (1598, expanded 1615) fills in considerably more detail for researchers needing the operational picture. Historical dictionaries uniformly treat this as a term of purely antiquarian interest by the eighteenth century, which is accurate; the forest courts had effectively ceased to function well before Blackstone wrote.
Jurisdictional Note
This is a term of exclusively English legal history. It has no counterpart in American law, Scots law, or the civil law tradition. Scottish forest law developed along parallel but distinct lines under different terminology. Researchers working in Welsh or Irish historical sources may encounter analogous concepts under different labels, but de viridi et venatione as a phrase is specific to the English royal forest system.