Definition
Drifts of the forest (also drift of the forest, plural: drifts) were periodic official inspections of forests, chases, and similar common lands in which all cattle and other animals found grazing within the bounds were driven together into a pound or enclosed place. The purpose was threefold: to determine whether the forest was overstocked (surcharged) beyond its lawful capacity; to identify whose beasts were present and whether those animals had a lawful right to be there (i.e., whether they were commonable); and to discover any trespassing or unlicensed cattle. The driving and impounding was carried out at fixed times of year by the officers of the forest — wardens, verderers, or their deputies — acting under the authority of the Crown or the lord of the forest.
The drift was thus both an administrative census of grazing animals and an enforcement mechanism for the rules of common of pasture. Beasts found to be uncommonable — that is, belonging to persons with no right of common, or exceeding the number permitted — could be impounded and their owners required to pay before recovering them.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The entry for "drifts of the forest" is solely defined as the plural of "drift of the forest," offering no independent meaning. The base word "drift" in ordinary English refers to gradual movement, accumulation, or deviation from a course.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's 1913 defines "drift" in a pastoral or herding sense as "a drove or collection of animals driven," and in a general sense as the act of driving or being driven. The forest management sense does not appear as a standalone entry.
The legal meaning is not simply "a drift of animals in a forest." It is a formal legal procedure — a compulsory, scheduled roundup conducted by Crown or seigniorial officers with specific jurisdictional and evidentiary purposes. The ordinary pastoral sense of driving cattle gives no indication that the drift carried legal consequences for the owners of impounded beasts or that it served as the primary mechanism for policing rights of common.
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Why It Matters in Research
Drifts of the forest are a feature of English forest law and the law of common, a body of medieval and early modern rules that had largely ceased to function as living law by the nineteenth century. Researchers will encounter the term almost exclusively in historical materials: treatises on the forest laws (such as Manwood's Treatise of the Forest Laws, first published 1598), Year Book cases, and records of forest eyre proceedings. The term will not appear in modern American or most modern Commonwealth statutes.
Several research traps deserve attention. First, "forest" in this legal context does not mean woodland in the ecological sense — it meant a designated royal or seigniorial hunting ground, which might include open heath, moor, or pasture as well as trees. A researcher searching for "forest management" in modern environmental law will find nothing relevant to drifts. Second, the closely related institution of the "pound" is central to understanding what happened to impounded beasts after a drift; the law of impoundment (distress) and redemption is a separate body of material. Third, drifts must be distinguished from "agistment" (the taking in of others' cattle to graze for payment) and from "attachments of the forest" (arrests of persons for forest offenses). These terms sometimes appear in close proximity in historical sources.
For researchers working in English legal history, the records of forest proceedings — particularly the Forest Eyre rolls in the Public Record Office — are the primary original source. Secondary materials such as Manwood, Coke's commentary on forest customs, and later summaries in the historical law dictionaries are the practical starting point. American law has no counterpart institution.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary and Rapalje & Lawrence are in close agreement on substance, defining drifts as the view or examination of cattle in a forest or chase to determine surcharge and commonability, conducted by forest officers who drive the beasts to a pound. Both definitions are accurate as summaries.
Neither source develops the procedural dimension: what officers had authority to conduct a drift, what notice was required, what remedies an owner had against wrongful impoundment, or how the frequency and timing of drifts was regulated. For these details, Manwood's Treatise of the Forest Laws remains the indispensable primary authority, and researchers should treat the dictionary summaries as introductory orientations rather than complete accounts.
It is also worth noting that both dictionary entries reflect the condition of the term as a historical curiosity by the time of their compilation. Neither source indicates that the law of drifts was then in active practice; the definitions function more as glosses for readers encountering the term in older materials than as guides to current legal operations.
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Jurisdictional Note
Drifts of the forest are a creature of English forest law and have no American legal counterpart. In England and Wales, the forest laws as a functional system fell into disuse over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and surviving common rights are now regulated under modern legislation including the Commons Act 2006. The term is irrelevant to American public lands law and federal forest management, which operate under an entirely different statutory framework.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Property Law Encyclopedia: Federal Public Lands — Management (BLM, Forest Service, National Parks) — for orientation to modern American public land law, which provides no substantive overlap with the English forest law context of drifts but is relevant for researchers who arrive at this term via a public lands research path and need to understand why modern American sources will not contain it.
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