Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Manwood, John
MANWOOD, JOHN (d. 1610), legal author, a relative of Sir Roger Manwood [q.v.] , was a barrister of Lincoln's Inn, gamekeeper of Waltham Forest, and justice of the New Forest. He died in 1610. Manwood married Mary Crayford, of a Kentish family, by whom he had issue. His estate of Priors, part of the dissolved priory of Blackmore, in the parish of Bromfield, Essex, remained in his posterity till the last century, when the male line became extinct.
Manwood compiled and printed in 1592 (at first for private circulation) a compendium of forest law entitled ‘A Brefe Collection of the Lawes of the Forest; collected and gathered together as well out of the Statutes and Common Lawes of this Realme as also out of sundrie auncient Presidents and Records, concerning Matters of the Forest. With an Abridgment of all the principall Cases, Judgments, and Entres, contained in the Assises of the Forestes of Pickering and of Lancaster,’ 4to. The first published edition of this excellent work, much enlarged and improved, appeared in 1598, London, 4to; 2nd edit. 1599, 4to. A new and enlarged edition was published in 1615 with the title: ‘A Treatise of the Lawes of the Forest: wherein is declared not only those Lawes, as they are now in Force, but also the Originall and Beginning of Forests: And what a Forest is in his owne proper Nature, and wherein the same doth differ from a Chase, a Parke, or a Warren, with all such Things as are incident or belonging thereunto, with their severall proper Tearmes of Art. Also a Treatise of the Pourallee, declaring what Pourallee is, how the same first began, what a Pourallee man may do, how he may hunt and use his owne Pourallee, how farre he may pursue and follow after his Chase, together with the Limits and Bounds, as well of the Forest as the Pourallee. Collected as well out of the Common Lawes and Statutes of this Land, as also out of sundrie Learned Auncient Authors, and out of the Assises of Pickering and Lancaster,’ London, 4to; reprinted, London, 1665, 4to; 4th edit. London, 1717, 8vo; 5th edit. London, 1741, 8vo, both revised by William Nelson of the Middle Temple. An abridgment by N. Cox is dated 1696. Manwood is also the author of a brief ‘Project for Improving the Land Revenue by inclosing Wasts,’ submitted to Sir Julius Cæsar, 27 April 1609, first printed in John St. John's ‘Observations on the Land Revenue of the Crown,’ App. No. 1, London, 1787, 4to.
[Lansd. MS. 90, ff. 19–25; Addit. MS. 26047, ff. 161–4; Morant's Essex, ii. 77; Wright's Essex, i. 187; Boys's Sandwich, pp. 187, 481; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1603–10, pp. 418, 645; Dugdale's Orig. p. 60; Bridgman's Legal Bibliography; Nichols's Lit. Anecd. viii. 298.]