By the Rev. Canon J. EB. Jackson, F.S.A. 283 
Of the reduction of the Wiltshire forest to its original small 
dimensions, when, and by whom effected, I have no account: nor 
ean I say exactly when this part so reduced was finally disafforested., 
but if seems to have been in the beginning of the reign of James I. : 
for in some legal evidence about forest rights taken about the year 
1640, an old man remembered the king’s deer still running about 
Dartford Woods, Chapmanslade, and as far as Brook House, and 
they were, he said, so tame that they would hardly get out of his 
way. 
The proper size of Somersetshire Selwood is deseribed in a 
perambulation deed of A.D. 1297,' and of the final breaking up of 
this we have some account. In 1633, King Charles I., wanting 
money, resolved to raise a little by selling his royal rights. The 
Earl of Pembroke was at that time chief forester, and Sir Thomas 
Thynne, grandson of the founder of Longleat, was his deputy for 
the upper part about Frome. Sir Thomas received an order from 
the Crown to make a survey and return of the lands within that 
part. For some time he did not move in the matter, as the business 
was not at all to his liking. It would deprive him of certain in- 
fluence and dignity, as the King’s representative, and he was rather 
disposed to let the matter drop, but sundry peremptory reminders 
were sent to him, and so it went forward. The tract to which the 
papers I have seen refer was what are now called the East and 
West Woodlands, with part of Marston. The arrangement was to 
divide the whole into three parts. One part was to go to the 
Crown, in consideration of giving up all rights; one part to Sir 
Thomas Thynne and other landowners; and the third to sundry 
commoners who had certain privileges of turning cattle in to feed 
on the open part of the forest. The King then sold the one-third 
assigned to him, and so got the money he required. The other part 
ultimately came by purchase to be merged in the Longleat estate : 
and there was the end of Selwood Forest. Among the landowners 
was the Lord Arundell, of Wardour, who was then the owner of 
1 Printed in Collinson’s ‘Somerset,’ vol. ii., 195, and vol. iii, 56. Also in 
Phelps’s ‘‘ Somerset,” i., 147. 
