Wasn't it all a shocking waste? The British Empire was expanding, the Industrial Revolution had ushered in a modern world of steam and steel. In the year 1851 the Great Exhibition in London, with its huge Crystal Palace of iron and glass, was drawing trainloads of eager visitors from all over Britain to see the results of industrial progress on a world-wide scale. In the countryside farm machinery was coming to the land; a huge new programme of inclosure had partitioned the wasteful old communal fields and common wastes into efficient private units. People had been thrown off the land, admittedly, but there were jobs for them in the growing manufacturing towns. Surely it was time to create tidy plantations in the Forest's unreformed wilderness.

In 1848 a House of Commons Select Committee investigated the Forest. They were shocked by what they found: Forest officials paid for doing nothing; those in charge of the woods selling off timber for themselves; venality, criminality. In short, the place was much as it had been for the last nine hundred years. They saw that reform was needed at once.

They proceeded with a logic which could only evoke admiration. The deer, since they served no purpose, must go. But if the Crown was no longer farming the deer, then it must be compensated. Any voices protesting that by getting rid of the deer the Crown was actually saving itself from a loss, were stifled. The compensation was fixed at fourteen thousand acres to be enclosed for woods - this in addition to the six thousand or so designated, though not all taken up, under the old 1698 Act. Finally, to make the new interest of the Crown very clear, the commoners who shared the Forest were to fall under the control of the Office of Woods. There was no consultation with the commoners. In the brief period before the proposal and the legislation the five greatest landowners in the Forest managed to have the proposed new inclosures reduced to ten thousand acres. Then the measure was whisked through.

Soon after this, the day to day administration of the Forest was placed in the hands of a new Deputy Surveyor. His name was Cumberbatch.

Had he been wrong to bring Pride? Not many people in the Forest had any use for the Office of Woods, but Pride's loathing of Cumberbatch was legendary. On the other hand, he could be a wonderful witness. The best sort of smallholder the Forest had to offer. It was a risk, of course, but he'd coached his tenant carefully.

Just so long as he kept his temper.

The presence of Lord Henry, by contrast, was deeply reassuring. Not only was Lord Henry's elevated social position a help, but as the owner of Beaulieu also sat as a Member of Parliament in the House of Commons, he had real influence at Westminster.