A HISTORY OF DORSET 



The venison presentments of Blackmoor are imperfect, but they include the taking of two harts, 

 several does, a fawrn, and a buck. The vert presentments amounted to a hundred and thirty-nine 

 separate charges. 



Pleas of the Forest for Dorset were again held in 1270, before Roger de Clifford and three 

 other justices at Sherborne." The first membrane opens with a list of nine of those summoned to 

 attend who were dead, and with the fines on defaulters varying from 2s. to 20s. The vert present- 

 ments for the bailiwick of Blackmoor amounted to eighty-three, the fines varying from I2(/. to half a 

 mark ; an a/ibi was established in two of these charges, and a tew offenders were excused on the 

 ground of poverty. The vert presentments of Gillingham for the same period numbered thirty- 

 three, but these included a variety of cases in which oaks had been granted by licence, such as two 

 oaks from Robert de Wychampton, dean of Salisbury, and a single oak for Master Nicholas de 

 Cranford, parson of the church of Gillingham. 



There is also an entry to the effect that 407 oaks had been felled at Gillingham since the last 

 pleas by the king's orders, including 238 for repairs to the houses and court at Gillingham, and 

 twelve for the works at the castle of Sherborne. 



The venison presentments of Powerstock were solely concerned with the taking of roe deer, 

 concerning which there were three cases ; whilst the like charges at Blackmoor at these pleas 

 were only concerned with fallow deer, involving the killing of a buck, a fawn, and fourteen 

 deer. The Blackmoor presentments also included several cases of hunting and one of snaring, when 

 there was no known capture of game. The Gillingham presentments were concerned with fallow 

 deer, save a single case in which a stag (red deer) was killed. A large number of instances of inclosures 

 and encroachments, contrary to the assize of the forest, were brought before the justices as the result 

 of the regarders' reports. 



These Forest Pleas dealt with the whole of the forests of the county. It may be as well now 

 to give a few further selected particulars that can be gleaned from the general records as to the 

 different forest divisions of the shire. 



Gillingham, in the extreme north of the county, flanked by Somerset on the west, and by Wilts 

 on the north and east, was originally one of the divisions of the widespread ancient forest district of 

 Selwood.^- Various perambulations of Gillingham, of the reigns of Henry III, Edward I, and 

 Elizabeth have been printed in the third edition of Hutchins's Dorset}^ Broadly speaking, whatever 

 may have been its earlier limits, the bounds of Gillingham Forest, subsequent to the Forest Charter 

 at the beginning of the reign of Henry III, were nearly conterminous with those of the ancient 

 parish of Gillingham, which was one of the largest in the county, having a circuit of 41 miles, and 

 an area of over 15,000 acres. Leland says that in his days it was 'four miles in length, a mile or 

 thereboute in bredth.' ^^ 



The bailiwick of this forest was usually in the hands of some person of note, who held it in 

 serjeanty as the king's forester in fee, and was bound to maintain it at his own cost. This hereditary 

 ofBce, according to Coker, was held throughout the greater part of the reign of Henry III by Walter 

 Joce.^* On his death in 1265, it was found that Walter held of the king in chief a carucate of 

 land in Gillingham and kept the forest, both vert and venison, at his own charge. ^^ 



At the death of John Joce, in 1310, it was found that he held lands in Gillingham to the 

 extent of a messuage and 137 acres by serjeanty of being forester in fee of Gillingham, and keeper 

 of the park of the manor which was then in the hands of Queen Margaret, by grant of Edward I. ^' 

 He left two daughters heiresses ; the elder, Amicia, conveyed this bailiwick, with its fees and 

 profits, to her husband, William de Buggele, who died seised of it in 1314. Two years later this 

 forestership was alienated by the crown to William Hame and his heirs. In the reign of Henry IV 

 the bailiwick of forest and park passed from Hame to Stourton, in which family it remained until 

 the attainder of Charles Lord Stourton, when the oflice, valued at ;^40 per annum, reverted to the 

 crown .^* 



There was also a superior office in this forest over the forester in fee, the appointment to which 

 rested with the crown at pleasure. In 1 340 Edward III confirmed Matthew Beleval in the warden- 

 ship of Gillingham Forest for life, to which office he had been nominated by Queen Isabella on the 

 death of John le Hay ward." 



From time immemorial the abbess and convent of Shaftesbury had the right to take four horse- 

 loads of brushwood for fuel from this forest every day save Sundays. But in 1340, when one 

 Geoffrey de Cotes, temporarily supplying the place of John de Monte Gomery, steward of Queen 



" For. Proc. Exch. T. R. No. 11. " Coker, Surv. 0/ Dorset (1732), 87. 



" Ibid, iii, 620-1, 662-3. '* Leland, ///'«. vi, fol. 52. 



" Coker, Surv. of Dorset, 88, where the name is misspelt ' Foce.' 



"^ Inq. p.m. 49 Hen. Ill, No. 2. " Inq. p.m. 5 Edw. II, No. 42. 



" Hutchins, Dorset, iii, 624. '^ Pat. 14 Edw. Ill, pt. i, m. 11. 



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