Histories of the English forest inevitably use Fitz Nigel’s definition of the forest from hisDialogus de Scaccarioof Henry II’s reign as their reference point.² In their supplement to Stubbs’sConstitutional Historyon English forests, Ch. Petit-Dutaillis and Georges LeFebvre went so far as say that ‘the nature of the Forest could not be more clearly stated’,³ and H. A. Cronne wrote that there is ‘no more succinct definition of the Forest’