FOREST OF DEAN. 249 



Cinderford, in the Forest, derives its name from these 

 heaps. 



As in the case of most of the Royal Forests, there 

 is no record of the origin of that of Dean. It is first 

 mentioned in Domesday Book as having been exempted 

 from taxes by Edward the Confessor. William the 

 Conqueror is known to have visited it occasionally for 

 the purpose of hunting the deer. He was there in 

 1069, when he received tidings that the Danes had 

 invaded Yorkshire, and had taken its capital. He is 

 reported to have sworn a terrible oath by "the 

 splendour of the Almighty," that "not one North- 

 umbrian should escape his revenge," and he well kept 

 his oath. * 



The Forest, like others, was greatly enlarged by the 

 Norman kings succeeding the Conqueror, in the sense 

 that they applied the forest laws to a great area of 

 land in private ownership, extending up to Gloucester 

 and to the Severn and Wye. These boundaries were 

 again reduced by Henry III. and Edward I., in conse- 

 quence of the grave complaints of the people as to the 



force of a great wheel that drives a pair of bellows twenty feet 

 long, all that iron is extracted out of the cinders, which could not 

 be forced from it by the Roman foot blast. And in the Forest of 

 Dean and thereabouts and as high as "Worcester, there are great and 

 infinite quantities of these cinders, some in vast mounts above 

 ground, some under ground, which will supply the iron works for 

 hundreds of years, and these cinders are those which make the prime 

 and best iron and will make less charcoal than doth the ironstone," 

 Nicholls, Forest of Dean, p. 223. 



*Ib. p. 7. 



