FOKESTS OF GKEAT BKITAIN. 299 



Middle Ages, was costly and difficult. For all tliese reasons, tlie 

 consumption of wood was large, and apprehensions of the exhaus- 

 tion of the forests were excited at an early period. Legislation 

 there, as elsewhere, proved ineffectual to protect them, and many 

 authors of the sixteenth century express fears of serious evils from 

 the wasteful economy of the people in this respect. Harrison, in 

 his curious chapter " Of "Woods and Marishes " in Holinshed's 

 compilation, complains of the rapid decrease of the forests, and 

 adds : " Howbeit thus much I dare affirme, that if woods go so 

 fast to decaie in the next hundred yeere of Grace, as they haue 

 doone and are like to doo in this, .... it is to be feared that 

 the fennie bote, broome, turf e, gall, heath, firze, brakes, whinnes, 

 ling, dies, hassacks, flags, straw, sedge, reed, rush, and also seacole, 

 will be good merchandize euen in the citie of London, whereunto 

 some of them euen now haue gotten readie passage, and taken vp 



their innes in the greatest merchants' parlours I would 



wish that I might line no longer than to see foure things in this 

 land reformed, that is : the want of discipline in the church : the 

 couetous dealing of most of our merchants in the preferment of 

 the commodities of other countries, and hinderance of their owne : 

 the holding of faires and markets vpon the sundaie to be abol- 

 ished and referred to the wednesdaies : and that euerie man, in 

 whatsoeuer part of the champaine soile enioieth fortie acres of 

 land, and vpwards, after that rate, either by free deed, copie hold, 

 or fee farme, might plant one acre of wood, or sowe the same 

 with oke mast, hasell, beech, and sufficient prouision be made that 

 it may be cherished and kept. But I feare me that I should then 

 hue too long, and so long, that I should either be wearie of the 

 world, or the world of me." * 



*HoLiNSHED, reprint of 1807, i., pp. 357, 858. It is evident from this 

 passage, and from another on page 397 of the same volume, that, though sea- 

 coal was largely exported to the Continent, it had not yet come into general 

 use in England. It is a question of much interest, when mineral coal was first 

 employed in England for fuel. I can find no evidence that it was used as a 

 combustible until more than a century after the Norman conquest. It haa 

 been said that it was known to the Anglo-Saxon population, but I am ac- 

 quainted with so passage in the literature of that people which proves this. 

 The dictionaries explain the Anglo-Saxon word grmfa by sea-coal. I have met 

 with this word in no Anglo-Saxon work, except in the Chronicle, a.d. 852, 

 from a manuscript certainly not older than the 12th century, and in two citations 



