137 THE ANCIENT INDUSTRIES OF CANNOCK CHASE, 
much valued on account of the young shoots providing food for the 
cattle, and the inhabitants had liberty to let all manner of cattle 
wander through the Forest in winter time, so that they might browse 
on the tender shoots of the hollies. The practice of docking and 
polling the Forest trees was also condemned, because although 
affording material for charcoal burning, it spoilt the trees and caused 
many of them to die. How great a change this wholesale destruc- 
tion had wrought is forcibly depicted by the poet Masters, who thus 
depicts the aspect on Cannock Chase in the 17th century :— 
‘“ A vast, a naked plain confines the view, 
‘Where trees unnumbered in past ages grew ; 
“The green retreat of wood nymphs, once the boast, 
‘‘The pride, the guardians of their native coast ! 
“‘ Alas! how changed, each venerable oak 
‘“ Long since has yielded to the woodman’s stroke. 
‘* Where’er the cheerless prospect meets the eye, 
“No shrub, no plant, except the heath, is nigh. 
‘The solitary heath alone is there, 
‘* And wafts its sweetness in the desert air. 
““So sweet its scent, so sweet its purple hue, 
“We half forget that here a Forest grew.” 
Much of our knowledge of the ways and customs of our fore- 
fathers is derived from diaries kept by persons then living. One 
such diary there is happily preserved, in which a lady describes the 
coal pits in Beaudesert Park as she saw them. Celia Fiennes was a 
relative of Lord Saye and Sele, and in 1695 visited Sir Charles 
Wolseley, Bart., at Wolseley Hall, near Rugeley. She appears to 
have been on a riding tour through England accompanied by two 
men servants, and she vigourously described what she saw and was 
told in her diary, in quaint language and villainous spelling! 
‘‘ Another day,” she says, ‘‘I went to Boudezworth, the Lord 
‘‘ Paget’s house 4 miles off, and passed by ye coal pits where they were 
“‘ digging ; they drew up the coal in baskets with a little wheel or wind- 
‘lass, like a well. They complain of having lost ye vein of the best 
“sort weh they call Channel Coale, andis ye sort they still have in Wales 
‘Cand Lancashire which burnt much lighter and less waste, but this I 
‘‘thought to be very good, no better thanit. It isin great pieces, and 
“So cloven burns light so as the poorer sort work by it, and soit serves 
‘‘for heate and light: you might have a load for 3 or 4 shillings 
“brought home yt would serve a poore man’s familly ye winter. I have 
‘in London given 40/- for such a load.” 
