26 THE FORESTS OF ENGLAND. 



the great battle in which Edwin, the first Saxon king of 

 Northumbria, was slain, when fighting against Penda, king 

 of Mercia, and Cadwallader king of Wales, most probably 

 took place, not as has generally supposed, at Hatfield, 

 near Doncaster, but at Hatfield in this neighbourhood, and 

 that his body was buried at the village at this place, which 

 from that circumstance derived its name of Edwinstowe, 

 or, the place of Edwin.' Although Sherwood, as a forest, 

 is not directly named in Domesday Book, many places 

 comprised within its district are described as portions of 

 of the king's great manor of Mansfield ; and this circum- 

 stance of the Crown possessing already so much property 

 here would greatly facilitate the operation of converting it 

 into one of the great hunting-grounds of our Norman 

 sovereigns, who were, most of them, passionately addicted 

 to the chase. It would thus become a royal forest, and be 

 brought under the cruel operation of the forest laws, which 

 punished the least infraction of their injunctions with 

 the severest penalties, even to the loss of life or limb. 

 The earliest express notice of the Forest of Sherwood 

 occurs in the fifth year of King Stephen, in which a 

 William Peverel, of Nottingham, gave account of 23 6s. 8d. 

 of the pleas of the forest ; and, next, in the first year of 

 King Henry II., when William Peverel the younger also 

 answered respecting the plea of the forest. The elder 

 William Peverel had charge of the castle of Nottingham, 

 and held, in all, 162 manors. In Derbyshire he held 

 twelve manors, and in Nottingham alone he had forty-eight 

 merchants' and traders' houses, thirteen knights' houses, 

 and eight bondsmen's cottages, besides ten acres of land 

 granted to him by the king to make him an orchard, and the 

 three churches of SS. Peter, Mary, and Nicholas, all three 

 of which he gave, with their land, tythe, and appurtenances, 

 by his charter, to the Priory of Lenton. 



" In the twelfth year of Henry II., Robert de Caux, of 

 Caus, Lord of Laxton, a farmer under the Crown, answered 

 for 20, and in the fifteenth year of the same reign Regi- 

 nald de Laci for a like sum (pro censu forested) under the 



