2i8 THE ROYAL FORESTS OF ENGLAND 



exceptional grants that were made from time to time. Thus, 

 about 1680 the inhabitants of Edwinstowe petitioned the Crown 

 for permission to fell 200 oaks to the value of .200, out of the 

 hays of Birkland and Bilhagh, for the repair of their parish 

 church, then in a ruinous condition through the fall of the 

 steeple. The petition was entertained, and on a survey being 

 made for that purpose it was found that "although there were 

 yet standing many thousand trees, few of which there were but 

 what were decaying, and very few useful for the navy." 



As to the red deer of the forest the fallow deer were con- 

 fined to the parks they increased during the eighteenth 

 century. The 1,000 head of 1538 was admittedly only a rough 

 estimate ; a more particular survey of 1616 gave the numbers 

 at 1,263, an d another of 1635 at J >367. Out of the latter 

 total, 987 were termed raskall, or out of condition. 



In 1708 a representative meeting of the gentlemen of the 

 north of the county was held at Rufford, at which a strongly- 

 worded petition was adopted, addressed to the Crown, com- 

 plaining of "the grievous and almost intolerable burden we 

 labour under by reason of the numerous increase of the red 

 deer in the forest of Sherwood these late years." They com- 

 plained that so many of the woods had been granted or given 

 away by the queen's predecessors that there was but little 

 harbour left for the deer in the forest, and the deer in conse- 

 quence were distributed all over the county, eating up the corn 

 and grass ; that their tenants had often to watch all night to 

 keep the deer off; that their servants were terrified by several 

 new keepers made by the present deputy- warder, who "threaten 

 them if so much as they do set a little dog at the deer though 

 in the corn"; that not only had they to watch their cornfields, 

 where the deer often lay nine or ten brace together, but they 

 so destroy private woods as to injure them to the extent of 

 from 10 to 50 a year. 



At the same time another petition was addressed to the 

 House of Commons with about 400 signatures, wherein it was 

 stated that the number of red deer in the forest, "till very 

 lately, had seldom or never exceeded three hundred, which was 

 as great a number, considering the barreness of the soil and 

 the great destruction of the woods, as the forest could main- 

 tain." In the light of other evidence this estimate, used for the 



