EXMOOR UNDER THE PLANTAGENETS. 209 



at variance with divers very honest inhabitants of 

 good account and credit, which came out of their 

 houses to view the said outrage " and remon- 

 strate. On the precise method of baiting a bear 

 with a wheelbarrow the old books are silent, 

 but, after all, something must be left to the 

 imagination. 



It is stated by Mr. Greswell, in his history of the 

 Forests of Somerset, that the Forest of Petherton 

 was a sort of Alsatia long after disafforestation, and 

 drew together restless and unquiet spirits. Even so 

 late as 17 19 this was a grievance. "At a meeting 

 of parishioners in vestry assembled it was voted 

 that all who did not belong to the parish should be 

 sent out of it . . . that all unlicensed ale 

 houses should be utterly repressed as recep- 

 tacles of thieves and nurseries of lewdness and 

 debauchery." 



These are probably the people whom Edmund 

 Horner, " the bad man," collected to help the mal- 

 contents on Exmoor against the ranger. The 

 trouble seems to have lasted several years, though 

 what came of it finally we do not know, but there 

 clearly was more in it than a casual case of deer 

 stealing. The ranger's task, even with the help of 

 the fifty-two "free suitors" of Hawkridge and 

 Withypool, men who, if tradition be correct, were 

 not likely to stick at trifles, cannot have been an 

 easy or pleasant one during the concluding years of 

 Elizabeth's reign. 



P 



