A HISTORY OF NOTTINGHAMSHIRE 



One destructive practice occupied much of the attention of this court. Forest officers were 

 paid in kind, and each had an annual ' fee tree ' ; but as each officer possessed the right, or had 

 acquired the custom, of selecting his own, every year saw the depletion of the finest timber. 



The two following documents, one an order, the other an attestation, pertain to this 

 question. ' Ordered that Richard Grammar, woodward of the Blidworth Office, belonging to his 

 grace the archbishop of York, shall have licence to fell and take away one tree in any of his grace's 

 woods in the forest of Sherwood, for his fee tree in the execution of his office.' Lord Byron had to 

 make the following assurance : ' These are to certify whom it may concerne that I had fee tree 

 allowed me out of the Forest of Sherwood every yere whilst I was bowbearer of the saide forest.' 



It would be an error altogether inadmissible to suppose that this Sherwood Forest Court, as well 

 as those of earlier date, concerned themselves only with feudal lords and owners. It was also the 

 great and legally organized engine for the protection of the poorer sort in their common rights. In 

 the parish of Blidworth an intense forestal spirit prevailed, even the humblest inhabitant having all 

 kinds of privileges, such as gathering windfallen wood, housebote, haybote, and the keep of so many 

 animals. One great duty of the court was to preserve the privilege of water, a claim of much value in 

 the sandy soil of Sherwood. The wells and sykes were open ' omnibus animalibus, omnibus temporibus 

 anni, omnimodo, porcis, anseribus, capris l duntaxat exceptis.' There was a distinction almost 

 ethnological between the true sylvico/a or forest-dweller and the mere ' purley man ' a distinction 

 not wholly obliterated that is between him who enjoyed the pleasure and restrictions of Sherwood, 

 and the inferior being whose hard luck it was to be born and pass his life en pur lieu in the void 

 and open space around. 2 



To a certain extent the court concerned itself with the system of agriculture known as bricks, 

 which was pursued in some of the more fertile spots. Inhabitants of Blidworth, etc., banded 

 together to obtain a lease from some of the forest dignitaries, with the consent of the superior 

 lord, under which farming might be carried on after a fashion inadmissible in the stricter days of 

 forest law. These enclosures called ' brecks,' or portions ' broken up,' were let at small rentals, one 

 reason being the necessity of high and strong hedges, for which haybote was allowed, to prevent 

 incursions of forest animals, restraint of which in their semi-wild condition was very difficult. An 

 illustration lies at hand in a petition conceded and signed by Toby Mathew, archbishop of York. 

 Certain parishioners ask him, as lord of the manor, permission to make a breck of 20O acres. If 

 he will grant the prayer they ' promise, of their thankfulness unto your grace for this yore grete 

 bountie and good favour, they will be redie at your grace's resydynge at Southwell to help with 

 their droghtes to furnish yore provision, by leadynge of wood and lynge as you shall make them 

 liable. And they, and all theires (as otherwise they have), shall prayse and pray God for the long 

 contynewance of yre Grace to the good of hys church and this commonwealth.' 



Under the Commonwealth, and subsequently, a large number of Sherwood oaks were felled for 

 the navy; but various grants were made for exceptional purposes during that period and immediately 

 after the Restoration. About 1680, the inhabitants of Edwinstowe petitioned the crown for 

 permission to fell 200 oaks of the value of 200, out of the hays of Birkland and Bilhagh for the 

 repair of their parish church, then in a ruinous condition. The petition was entertained, and on a 

 survey for that purpose it was found that ' although there were standing many thousand trees, few 

 of which there were but what were decaying, and very few useful for the navy.' 3 



It should not be forgotten that the largest and most substantial of the beams used by Sir 

 Christopher Wren in the construction of St. Paul's came from Sherwood Forest. Among the 

 papers at Welbeck Abbey is a letter from the great architect to the steward of the duke of 

 Newcastle, dated 4 April, 1695, referring to 'the noble benefaction' promised by the duke in 

 1693, and sending the measurements of the 'great Beames ' then required. They were to be 

 '47 ft. long, 13 inches and 14 inches at the small end, .... and of growing timber, and as near 

 as can be without sap.' 4 



In 1708 a representative meeting of the gentlemen of the north of the county was held at 

 Rufford, at which a strongly-worded petition was adopted, addressed to the crown, complaining of 

 ' the grievous and almost intolerable burden we labour under by reason of the numerous increase of 

 the red deer in the forest of Sherwood these late years.' They complained that so many of the 



The keeping of goats was prohibited throughout the forest, as they were so offensive to the deer. 



The purlieus of a forest were, as a rule, those outbounds of a forest which had been disafforested in the 

 time of John or Hen. Ill ; these districts were not under regular forest law, but nevertheless their tenants 

 had to submit without any redress to the ravages of deer and game in general. As a rule, too, the privileges 

 of purlieu men were quite trivial as compared with the forest tenants ; consequently their position was 

 generally regarded as most undesirable. Particularly was this the case on the eastern confines of Sherwood 

 Forest. To call a man 'a purley' is yet a term of some opprobrium in the district. Blidworth was forestal, 

 but Farnsfield was purlieu, and a native of the former will still occasionally speak contemptuously of the latter 

 as a ' mere purley,' or ' youre nobbut purley,' though ignorant of its signification. 



1 Cox, Royal Forest!, 218. < White, Worksop and Sherwood. Forest, 149-50. 



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