6 J. E. nAETIITG — AN-IMALS WHICH HAVE BECOME 



them more inaccessible and wilder still. Between the tenth and 

 twelfth centuries great forests came up almost to the gates of 

 London. In a curious tract entitled ' Descriptio nobilissimae civi- 

 tatis Londonioe,' written by Fitzstephen, a monk of Canterbury, in 

 1174, it is stated that there were open meadows of pasture-land? 

 on the north side of the city, and that beyond these was a great 

 forest in whose woody coverts lurked the stag, the hind, the wild 

 boar, and the bull. Two-thirds or nearly of the county of Stafford 

 was, even in relatively modern times, either moorland or woodland. 

 The northern part, going nearly up to Buxton, was moorland ; the 

 central and eastern part, forest. Harwood, in his edition of Erdes- 

 wick's ' Survey of Staffordshire,' quoting Sir Simon Degge, says : 

 " The moorlands are the more northerly mountainous part of the 

 county lying betwixt Dove and Trent ; the woodlands are the more 

 southerly level part of the county. Between the aforesaid rivers, 

 including Needwood Forest, with all its parks, are also the parks 

 of Wichnor, Chartley, Horecross, Bagots, Loxley, and Paynesley, 

 which anciently were all but as one wood, that gave it the name of 

 Woodlands." Leland, about 1536, though he speaks of the woods 

 being then much reduced, confirms this, and even carries this 

 country of woods farther south. He says: " Of ancient tyme all 

 the quarters of the country about Lichefeild were forrest and wild 

 ground." That would bring the Staffordshire woodlands close 

 Tip to the purlieus of Charnwood Forest, in Leicestershire. Nor is 

 this all ; for about three miles north-west of Lichfield commences 

 Cannock Chase, with its parks as numerous and extensive as those 

 of Needwood, from which it was separated only by the river Trent. 

 This chase even at a comparatively recent period was " said to 

 contain 36,000 acres ; " while " in Queen Elizabeth's time l^eed- 

 wood Forest was twenty-four miles in circumference." From 

 the Peak northwards, throughout West Yorkshire and East Lanca- 

 shire, the forests, moors, and mosses connected with this mountain- 

 range were immense. 



Some idea of their extent may be gathered from the remarks of 

 the learned Dr. Whitaker, who, describing Whalley in Lancashire 

 in late Saxon and early IS'orman times, says: "If, excluding the 

 foi'est of Bowland, we take the parish of Whalley as a square of 

 161 miles, from this sum at least 70 miles, or 27,657 acres, must 

 be deducted for the four forests or chases of Blackbumshire, which 

 belonged to no township or manor, but were at that time mere de- 

 relicts, and therefore claimed, as heretofore unappropiiated, by the 

 first Norman lords. There Avill therefore remain for the different 

 manors and townships 36,000 acres or thereabouts, of which 3,520, 

 or not quite a tenth part, was in a state of cultivation ; while the 

 vast residuum stretched far and wide, like an ocean of waste inter- 

 spersed with a few inhabited islands." * Let us try to realize the 

 state of things, when out of 63,657 acres of land, over 60,000 were 

 either forest or waste, nearly half of that amount being unclaimed 



* Whitaker's ' ^Vhalley,' p. 171.— 1818. 



