220 THE ROYAL FORESTS OF ENGLAND 



in Ashfield, and Lenton and Radford, whereby 8,248 acres 

 were brought into cultivation. 



When Major Rooke published his interesting Sketch of the 

 Ancient and Present State of Sherwood Forest, in 1799, the part 

 of the forest that still remained to the Crown were the hays of 

 Birkland and Bilhagh, which had a total extent of 1,487 acres. 



At that time the ministers of this much restricted forest 

 were the Duke of Portland, lord warden by letters patent ; 

 four verderers, Sir F. Molineux, Bart., John Litchfield, E. T. 

 Gould, and W. Sherbrook, Esquires, elected by the free- 

 holders for life ; and John Gladwin, Esq., steward, appointed 

 by the lord chief justice in eyre during pleasure. The office 

 of bow-bearer had been vacant since the death of Lord Byron. 

 There were also nine keepers appointed by the verderers 

 during pleasure, with an annual salary of 2os. each, and two 

 annually sworn woodwards for Sutton and Carlton. Each of 

 the verderers received a fee-tree annually out of the king's hays 

 of Birkland and Bilhagh. 



Major Rooke when writing of the many venerable old oaks 

 of extraordinary size then standing, several of them measuring 

 34 feet in circumference, and with tops and lateral branches 

 rich in foliage, though hollow in their trunks tells of the 

 remarkable extent of the woodland as late as the beginning 

 of the eighteenth century : 



''The Revd. Dr. Wylde, Prebend of Southwell and rector of 

 St. Nicholas in Nottingham, assured me he had often heard his 

 father, William Wylde, Esq., of Nettleworth, who died in the year 

 1780, in the 83rd year of his age, say, that he well remembered one 

 continued wood from Mansfield to Nottingham." 



Major Rooke, in the same pamphlet, gives a remarkable 

 account, with plates, of the curious discovery of ancient tree 

 marks or brands that were found cut and stamped in the 

 bodies of certain trees recently felled in Birkland and Bilhagh, 

 and which denote the reigning king. 



"No. i has hollow or indented letters I and R for James Rex. 

 No. 2 has the same letters in relief, which filled up the interstices of 

 the letters in No. i before the piece was split. It is remarkable that 

 when the bark has been stript off for cutting letters, the wood which 

 grows over the wound never adheres to that part, but separates of 



