DUFFIELD FRITH 195 



the said Nicholas Kniveton the younger caused a buk to be 

 smytten, which Robert Bradshaw sonnes received." Ravens- 

 dale park : The Earl of Shrewsbury killed a buck. Sir 

 Henry Willoughby and the Commission had each a buck. 

 Sir Ralph Longford and Roger Vernon each two bucks. A 

 chance buck and two chance does were disposed of by the 

 keeper. 



By the time that great sportsman Henry VIII. came to 

 the throne, the stock of fallow deer had materially decreased 

 throughout this forest, and the disafforesting of most of 

 Colebrook ward, through the king granting so large a part 

 of it to Anthony Lowe, deprived the forest deer of much 

 of their wildest runs. Nevertheless, they must have been 

 fairly abundant in parts as late as 1541, for the Earl of Shews- 

 bury, the chief forester, wrote to the Earl of Southampton 

 on 6th July hoping that the king, at his coming to Notting- 

 ham, would visit his poor house at Wingfield and hunt in 

 Duffield Frith ; but before the end of the month the earl was 

 dead. 



In 1521 there must have been deer in the parks of Ravens- 

 dale and Mansell and generally throughout Hulland ward, for 

 15-r. was spent in those divisions in providing winter deer- 

 browse. 



The king, in 1523, granted to Anthony Lowe, who was 

 forester- in -fee of Duffield Frith and keeper of Milnhay, to 

 occupy those offices without rendering any account or paying, 

 as his father Thomas Lowe did, at ,3 1 1 s. a year for the 

 exercise of those offices ; a watermill and 200 acres of land in 

 Alderwasley were conferred on Anthony by the same patent. 



There are many appointments to patent offices in this forest 

 entered throughout the reign of Henry VIII., such as John 

 Bradshaw, keeper of Postern park ; Thomas Doughty, keeper 

 of Morley park ; and Thomas Oakemanton, keeper of Ravens- 

 dale park in 1510. 



Various forest appointments were also made by the Crown 

 in the reign of Edward VI., such as Sir Thomas Cokayne, 

 parker of Ravensdale, in June, 1553. 



The leases of the parks of Shottle and Postern, including 

 rights over the deer, show how steadily the old forest customs 

 were deteriorating. At the beginning of Elizabeth's reign the 



