During the later Middle Ages, oak forest was  widely uprooted to provide timber for Tudor warships, thereby drastically altering river channel form and process.  In Landscape and Memory (1996), Simon Schama argued that from Tudor times onwards the patrician role of the British monarchy as ‘guardian of the greenwood’ played second fiddle to a militaristic foreign policy.  Material demand for felled timber and farm land also grew in line with the rapidly expanding population, while dissolution of the monasteries freed forested land to entrepreneurial bidding - inevitably accelerating rates of deforestation.  With trees left thin on the ground as a result of maritime ambition and monastic decline, the potential for river braiding most likely diminished somewhat - and well-defined meanders became a relatively more common river landform in some lowland environments.