96 THE ROYAL FORESTS OF ENGLAND 



and penalties, to the great injury of the inhabitants. There- 

 upon letters patent was issued by the Crown sternly repro- 

 bating such action, addressed in the first place to William de 

 Lancaster, Baron of Kendal, with duplicates to Robert de 

 Vezpont, sheriff of Westmoreland, to Earl Warren for the 

 wood of Incelemor, and to Matilda de Lascy for the wood of 

 Pippin. 



It was doubtless in consequence of this royal reminder 

 that John de Vezpont, when he succeeded his father three 

 years later, granted to the lords of the manor of Warcop, 

 Sandford, Burton, and Hilton, in this county, freedom from 

 foresters' puture, and from all things that might be demanded 

 of that nature. 



DURHAM 



There is no mention of any forest of the county of Durham 

 in the lists of royal forests temp. Henry III., and there was 

 certainly no district under forest laws throughout by far the 

 greater part of Durham. The forest of Teesdale is, however, 

 occasionally named in the latter part of the fifteenth and in the 

 first half of the sixteenth century. The number of fallow and 

 red deer in this forest in 1538-9 has already been cited. 



In the western angle of the county, where it is separated 

 from Yorkshire on the south by the river Tees, and where it 

 reaches out to both Cumberland and Westmoreland, Durham 

 was in contiguity with forest districts of other counties, and 

 forest laws probably there prevailed over a small area. An 

 extensive township of the old widespread parish of Middleton- 

 in-Teesdale still bears the reduplicated name of Forest-and- 

 Frith ; it begins 4! miles north-west from Middleton, and ends 

 on the borders of Westmoreland, near the sources of the Tees. 

 At the furthest extremity of the wild district of Forest-and- 

 Frith is Harwood, the very name denoting a tract of ancient 

 woodland. Various of the smaller place-names and field names 

 have reference to deer, and a few to the former presence of wolf 

 and boar. 



The large parish of Stanhope, immediately to the north of 

 Middleton, has a western division termed Forest Quarter ex- 

 tending to the borders of Cumberland, just above Harwood, 

 and including Weardale. Leland, writing in the time of 



