They were granted "
estovers" - dead wood - for fuel, to repair their homes, fix tools or make charcoal.
Even the taking of dead wood (the right of
estovers) is detrimental to the woodland environment as decaying timber has high biodiversity value and is part of the woodland cycle.
The right to collect fuel wood - known at the time of the Magna Carta as "
estovers" - was contained in the document sealed by King John in June 1215.
Later in life, in Boston when I crossed paths with Governor Michael Dukakis on his morning walk, he turned a neighbourly blind eye to my gathering windfalls--'
estovers' as Magna Carta calls them--for my fireplace.
(93) Specifically, Sprankling claims that the rejection of English common law's strict rules preventing the conversion of forest land to farm land and limiting a life tenant's timber cutting to personal consumption uses (
estovers), which in England served rational conservation purposes given its wood-dependent economy and wood scarcity, served the American instrumentalist goal of converting wilderness into agricultural land.
