30 THE FORESTS OF ENGLAND. 



were often under the immediate keeping of the king's 

 Justices in Eyre beyond Trent, and that they ought to 

 have one forester riding alone through all the forest. Also 

 that the abbot and monks of Rufford, from the time of 

 Henry II., who granted them the privilege, had liberty to 

 take vert in their wood, within the reward of Sherwood, 

 and ' whatsoever was to them needful for their owne use, 

 and to all their house boote and hay boote, as well as to 

 all their granges in the forest and without; and they 

 might have a forester of their owne to keep their said 

 wood,' who was to do fealty before the justices of the king, 

 and to report at the attachments of the foresters and 

 verderers of the Crown what trees were taken by the said 

 monks. 



" The officers of the forest in later times seems to have 

 been a ' Lord Warden, Steward, and Keeper of the Forest 

 of Sherwood,' appointed by letters patent from the Crown; 

 a Bow-bearer and Ranger; four Verderers ; a Clerk of the 

 Forest ; a Steward appointed by the Lord Chief Justice 

 in Eyre ; a Clerk of the Swainmote and Attachment 

 Courts ; a Beadle ; nine Keepers appointed by verderers, 

 one for each of the nine walks into which the forest was 

 then divided (viz., Newstead and Popplewick ; Langton 

 Arbour, Blidworth, and High wells ; Kirkby, Sutton, and 

 Annesley Hills ; Mansfield and Lyndhurst ; Mansfield 

 Woodhouse and Norman's Woods ; Birkland, Bilhaugh, 

 and Clipston Skroggs ; Roomwood and Osland ; Blidworth 

 and Farnsfield ; and Calverton and Arnold Hill) ; a Wood- 

 ward for Sutton, and another for Carlton ; and others.' 



" Inroads by grants, enclosures, and the like, upon the 

 old forest lands, and the constant cutting down of trees 

 for naval, household, building, and carpentering purposes, 

 have, in later times, taken away the glory of old Sher- 

 wood, and reduced its confines to very narrow limits. 

 Still there are at Welbeck, Birkland, Clumber, Thoresby, 

 and other places, many acres of unalloyed beauty, and 

 hundreds of trees of surpassing interest and grandeur, 



