4 SKELETONS OF MEN AND HORSES. 



with earth ; and though the bones were much 

 decayed, yet the teeth were sound, and appeared 

 most commonly to have belonged to young persons, 

 and probably had been deposited in their present 

 situations at no very distant period of time. With 

 the bones of a horse so found there remained the 

 iron head of a lance, about a foot long, corroded, 

 but not greatly decayed. Unable better to account 

 for these skeletons, we suppose that they constituted, 

 when alive, part of the forces of General Fairfax, 

 and that they fell in some partial encounters with 

 the peasantry when defending their property about 

 to be plundered by the foragers of his army in 1645, 

 at the time he was besieging the castle of Bristol. 

 The siege lasted sixteen or seventeen days ; many 

 parties during that time must have been sent out by 

 him to plunder us cavaliers, and contention would 

 take place. 



It is foreign to my plan to enumerate, and it 

 might be difficult to discover, all the changes and 

 revolutions which have taken place here ; and I shall 

 merely mention, that this district formerly consti- 

 tuted a regal forest, and we find Robert Fitzhard- 

 ing holding it by grant in the time of King John. 

 We have a " lodge farm," it is true, and the 

 adjoining grange, the tc conygar," i. e. coneygard, 

 the rabbit- keeper's dwelling, may, perhaps, have 

 been the situation of the sylvan warren ; but there 

 are no remains, or any other indications, of a forest 

 ever having been in existence. Names and tra- 

 ditional tales are all that remain in most places now 



