FORESTRY 



ancient oaks of great girth with hollowed stems, though the historical one in which Sir John Rous 

 was concealed from the Roundheads for some days has disappeared. Henham manor had wood for 

 forty swine in the eleventh century. 



Nothing tended so much to the destruction of the old woods of Suffolk as the dissolution of 

 the monasteries. The religious houses had, for the most part, preserved them with faithful care ; 

 but the new owners felled or stubbed them up on all sides to produce ready money. 



The crown endeavoured, under Elizabeth, to do something to stay this spoliation, and several 

 commissions of inquiry were issued with regard to Rattlesden and other manors. 1 



Framlingham Park used to have an acreage of 600 acres, and the pales were 3 miles in 

 circuit. 2 It must have been remarkably well stocked with fallow deer. A roll of the accounts of 

 Richard Chambyn, park-keeper of Framlingham to the duke of Norfolk for the years 1 51 5- 1 8, 

 shows that in the first of these years presents were made of seventy-five bucks and sixty-four does; 

 in the following years the gifts of venison were yet larger. 3 There are also various proofs of the 

 considerable amount of timber contained in this once celebrated park in the fifteenth and sixteenth 

 centuries. 



As every park in olden times, as at present, embraced a certain amount of well-grown and 

 well-tended timber, it may be as well to recall how numerous were the Suffolk parks in the days of 

 Elizabeth. 



Saxton's Survey of this county, dated 1575, marks four parks in the hundred of Hartismere, 

 namely, Redgrave, Burgate, Westhorp, and Thwaite ; Wingfield, Denham, Monk Soham, 

 Kelsale, and Framlingham in the hundred of Hoxne; Kenton and Letheringham in the hundred of 

 Loes ; Henham, Blythburgh, Huntingfield, and Heveningham in Blything hundred ; Nettlestead 

 in Bosmere hundred ; Hadleigh in Cosford hundred ; Chilton, Small Bridge, GifFord Hall, 

 Cavendish, and three near Lavenham in Babergh hundred ; three near Stradishall in Risbridge 

 hundred ; and Chevington in Thingoe hundred. 4 



On the crown manors of Suffolk, although there was some timber taken, both in Elizabethan 

 and Stuart times, for the wholesome object of assisting the navy, no provision was made for future 

 production, and the surveyors seem to have been encouraged to add paltry sums to the revenue 

 by the rash destruction of coppice growth. At the beginning of the reign of James I, William 

 Glover was surveyor of the crown property in East Anglia, and had the control of the 

 considerable wood sales both in Norfolk and Suffolk. On 2 May, 1609, Glover wrote at 

 length to Lord Salisbury respecting the sale of the king's timber in the two counties, the claims 

 of the copyholders, the threats of the people of Ginningham and Tunstead to insist on felling 

 for their own use, and the marking of trees for navy purposes. From this and other com- 

 munications it becomes clear that there were at that date considerable woods at Frostenden and at 

 Leiston, both in Blything hundred. In these woods Glover could find but very few trees 

 sufficiently good for navy purposes. A great number were, however, marked as ' wrong tymber,' 

 that is twisted or gnarled or decaying trees useless for ship-building, yet suitable not only for 

 fuel but for smaller carpentering purposes. The timber sales from these woods produced the 

 handsome sum of £i,8jj 14*. 



Another royal manor, about the centre of the county to the south of Stowmarket, was the 

 extensive district of Barking-cum-Reedham, which was also at that time well wooded. Glover 

 reported to Lord Salisbury that the leases of this manorial property had fallen in some five or six 

 years previously, and that the woods were being seriously spoiled by the poor people of the neigh- 

 bourhood. As a means of checking this spoiling, Glover asked that crown leases should be granted 

 to himself. 5 



A survey of timber in Suffolk fit for the navy was undertaken in May, 165 1 6 ; and in January, 

 1666, Thomas Lewsley, writing from Woodbridge to the Navy Commissioners, reported that he had 

 met with much good timber in Suffolk, the greatest and best belonging to the two Mr. Mundys, who 

 were willing to supply it upon payment of their former bills of ,£400 due a year ago. 7 In the 

 following month particulars were furnished of 150 loads of Suffolk plank at £4. 10s. per load. 8 

 Edward Mundy, who had a timber yard at Woodbridge, wrote to the Navy Commissioners in the 

 March following, stating that he had sent a quantity of plank into the stores at Chatham, and 



1 Exch. Spec. Com. Nos. 2230, 2231, 2234, 2235. Unfortunately these documents are mostly 

 illegible. 



* Loder, Hist, of Framlingham (179S), 329. s Shirley, Deer and Deer Parks, 29-33. 



4 Several particulars of parks laid out in this county during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are 

 to be found in Shirley, Deer and Deer Parks, 1 18-22, as well as short particulars of two or three of earlier 

 date not mentioned above. 



4 S. P. Dom. Jas. I, vol. xlv, Nos. 7, 91. 



* S P. Dom. 165 1, xvii, 57. 



7 S.P. Dom. Chas. II, cxlv, 25. ' Ibid, cxlviii, 18. 



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