i 4 o THE ROYAL FORESTS OF ENGLAND 



At an unusually heavy Marchington woodmote in 1403, when 

 the fines amounted to us. qd., the penalty in each case for 

 a cartload of wood was 8d., and for a horseload 6d. An in- 

 quisition held that year in Tutbury ward convicted Robert 

 Amond, John Roberg, John Fuklyn, and Giles Fuklyn, monks 

 of the Cluniac priory of Tutbury, of breaking into the castle 

 park, on Thursday, after the feast of St. Margaret, and there 

 killing a doe and a fawn. This is one of the very few cases 

 of conviction of monks for venison trespass. Woodmotes 

 of this year were held at Birkley, or Byrkley, the site of the 

 chief lodge. 



A few years later the Benedictine monks of Burton were 

 in trouble, but only for wood trespass. 



Rolls relative to the minor forest courts of Needwood for the 

 fifteenth and first half of the sixteenth centuries are exception- 

 ally numerous. 



At the forest woodmote held at Birkley on i5th May, 1450, 

 various venison trespasses were presented, such as making 

 snares (retia) and buckstalls, breaking into parks, hunting 

 with greyhounds, and killing several fallow deer. There were 

 seventeen separate charges, some of which involved several 

 persons. 



Various other records of woodmotes held in the last half 

 of the fifteenth century are well worth consulting. 



At the woodmote held on 3rd June, 1524, at Birkley Lodge, 

 thirty-one trespassers in Tutbury ward were fined in small sums 

 for ordinary lopping offences one for breaking park pales, 

 another 2s. for cutting eight oaks, and two men 3-r. q.d. each 

 for carrying off two cartloads of wood. The fines for this ward 

 amounted to 18^. 6d. At the same court the fines in Barton 

 ward were $s. yd., in Yoxall QS. 8d., in Uttoxeter 2s. 10^., 

 and in Marchington 13^. gd. 



In Sir Oswald Mosley's History ofTamworth (1832) various 

 interesting particulars of the forest customs of Needwood and 

 Duffield are set forth at length. 



The abbot of Burton-on-Trent and the prior of Tutbury held 

 special privileges and peculiar rights in the forest of Needwood. 

 One of the many unforeseen unhappy results of the wholesale 

 suppression of the religious houses was the throwing into 

 confusion of a variety of forest customs. Those on whom 



