WE may be plunging into a slump that optimists believe will take a mere 30 odd years to get back to where we were but the old Forest has clearly got its priorities right.

I refer to your front page declaration (30/1/09) from Mick Holder. As an historian I find it extraordinary that sheep have "incontestable rights" to be a nuisance throughout the local area including Cinderford which lawyers have described as "statutory." This simply means it is covered by some special laws applied by the Crown. This is true, but where do they mention sheep or right to roam?

In my three year degree course in History at Oxford University a large chunk of it covered 2,000 years of English history. The Forest of Dean was not exactly highlighted in this but I do remember quite a lot about the Plantagenents and about Forest law. The myth is that Edward I, a most violent man, having conquered the Welsh, went up to Scotland to give them a right good bashing too.

Checked at Berwick on Tweed, he summoned miners from the Forest of Dean to undermine a castle there, which they did. He was so pleased, goes the story, that he granted them rights to let the livestock graze in his Royal Forest. This is rubbish.

In the first place the miners – who beforehand may or may not have taken a little drop of something – undermined the wrong castle, whilst his enemies, the Scottish bishops were in another building a mile away. He was not a man to reward failure. In the second place Royal Forests were kept for hunting and eating the deer. Any local person caught by him damaging the vert or encroaching on the grazing would have been strung up there and then.

It is true that later acts laid down that 11,000 acres at a time could be enclosed to protect young plantations and it could be argued that this, tacitly accepted, the rest were available for woodland grazing which was normal practice. I have visited the New Forest, Savanake Forest, Hatfield Forest, where grazing is the custom but none of them allow sheep which damage trees and are generally a nuisance.

In the huge riot in 1831 when miles of banks and fences were destroyed and the army had to be called in the Foresters drove in their cattle not sheep. So I am pleased to read in your latest edition (Feb 6) that Mick has extended his vision and is discussing introducing cattle and horses into the Forest.

But does this go far enough? For the last 28 years I have run a non-commercial adventure club for serving and retired teachers. One of the many highlights was elephant trekking in Northern Thailand. Going through the bush on the back of these magnificent beasts is sublime. It even beats the tank course at Bovington which I did in the Territorial Army. It would attract tourism on a massive scale. The Forestry Commission owns the land and they can do what they like but we don't want elephants roaming up Bream High Street on the strength of non-existent medieval "rights."

There are a great many laws which are still on the statute book which if not abrogated formally are just left to gather dust. There were hundreds of hanging offences – such as cutting down the cherry tree without authority, or that Second World War one which forbade kite flying in case German spies used it to run up aerials which a police inspector told me was still in force if not enforced.

As for the 2001 agreement between the Forestry Commission and the Commoners' Association he is right in saying that Rob Guest got several public bodies to sign their support. The trouble is that the Police, Defra, Trading Standards, the District Council have put themselves in a dodgy legal situation as the agreement is approving the sheep badgers breaking the Highways Act which are more powerful than any local agreements cooked up in Bank House, Coleford.

The only reason that I have been given for not prosecuting sheep badgers who use public highways to park their sheep is the cost of bringing cases to courts for perhaps a £60 fine. In any case Mick has shown his contempt for such agreements by announcing that the Commoners' Association will not abide by the compromise hammered out in 2007 after a costly course case brought by the District Council to enforce the agreement by such means as employing an Agister.

There is no common in the Forest. The Commoners' Association was formed at the initiative of the Forestry Commission hoping against hope and reality that half a dozen sheep badgers would maintain a tradition in a responsible manner.

The semi-wild boar are being fenced out I believe in places. My solution is for the Forestry Commission to apply for a Parliamentary Order to confirm that they can fence in or out or not at all where there is a nuisance from animals domestic or wild.

If he has a good pair of shoes he might also walk around Bream and see how many people are keen to see sheep, horses, cows or elephants roaming untended round the village. He might also read up the case of Weir and the Commoners' Association in Dr Cyril Hart's tome, "The Commoners of the Forest of Dean."

The Weirs supported by Cinderford Town Council sought compensation after sheep had trashed their garden. In their summing up in favour of the Weirs the Lord Chief Justice commented that the Commoners had not claimed any ancient rights. The reason is obvious. They would have been laughed out of court.

I am now off to the butts to practice with my longbow as ordered by good king Edward in 1363. – Roger Horsfield, Bream.