A HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX 



also the right to take bushes, stakes, and heather, without appointment 

 with the woodward or keeper of the chase, for the fences bordering on 

 the chase, without paying anything for the same. 



The jury further presented that the tenants of the manor from time 

 out of mind had all trees standing and adjoining so near their grounds 

 that a horse and a pack could not go between ; that the copyholders 

 had sufficient timber allowed them for repairing their houses out of the 

 chase if they had none within their own ground ; that the copyholders 

 and all lawful commoners had clay, gravel, and fern for their necessary 

 uses ; that the tenants, time out of mind, received a load of the wood 

 on St. George's Day, being the view day, for their pains, which the 

 keepers felled yearly on the chase for the browse of the deer ; also 

 so much of the browse wood as should be necessary for their fuel at the 

 old accustomed price of 8</. ; also decayed and ' doted ' trees at 2s. the 

 load ; also rotten wood, crabs, acorns, and the roots of felled trees for 

 necessary fuel without payment ; and that the commoners might turn 

 out what cattle they thought fit, without stint, on the chase. Moreover 

 timber had to be provided from the chase for public bridges and for rails 

 within the manor. The tenants by custom received annually from the 

 steward a buck and a doe in their respective seasons. Another in- 

 teresting custom was that all tenants were permitted to plant trees for 

 the safeguarding of their houses, and that they and their heirs were 

 entitled to the lop of such trees as they had planted. 



The largest oak then standing on the chase was felled in 1766 ; 

 the bole measured 30 ft. long and contained about three tons of timber ; 

 the diameter of the butt end was 3 ft. The price was only jTio. 



Reverting to the more general consideration of the wooded parks 

 of the county, Sexton's map of 1575 shows two parks and the chase of 

 Enfield, as well as the parks of ' Mariburne ' (Marylebone) and Hyde. 

 Norden's survey of the county, 1 596, is full of praise of the noble and 

 well-timbered parks of Middlesex, and enumerates ten that belonged 

 to Her Majesty, namely St. James's, Hyde, Marylebone, Hunsworth, 

 ' Hemton,' Hampton Court (2), Enfield (2), and Twickenham; the 

 last, however, of these had been recently disparked. 89 



With regard to the two parks of Enfield, the one was the ancient 

 Great Park or Frith, the parcus intrinsecus from which the outer bounds 

 of the chase radiated. The survey of 1650, the results of which so far 

 as the chase was concerned have already been cited, gave the area of the 

 park as 553 acres, 74 of which were in the parish of Edmonton; the 

 oaks numbered 1,246, exclusive of 397 marked for the Navy; and the 

 hornbeam and other trees 508. The other was the new or Little Park 

 adjoining Enfield House (taken out of the chase), which was conveyed 

 to the Crown by the Earl of Rutland. It was here that the children 

 of Henry VIII, Edward and Elizabeth, long resided. This park, of 

 375 acres, was sold by Charles I in 1641 to the Earl of Pembroke.* 



" Norden, Sttrv. ofM'idd. (ed. 1723), 14. 



" Lysons, Environs of Land, ii, 291, 297 ; Shirley, Deer Parks, 55. 



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