FORESTRY 



of the jury still pendent on tags of the parch- 

 ment. But there was nothing to report of any 

 moment, and it is a mere formal return, seven 

 lines in length. 48 



In July, 1489, Forest Pleas were held at 

 Buckingham before Sir John Ratcliif and Sir 

 Reginald Gray. There were ninety-seven pre- 

 sentments, and fines were inflicted varying from 

 half a mark to loos. The offences included the 

 killing of several fallow deer, and in two cases of 

 red deer, also of wholesale game hunting with 

 bows and arrows and cross-bows (ba/istis ac quarel- 

 Ki) by a large company chiefly from Notting- 

 hamshire and other counties. The vert pre- 

 sentments numbered 117, the fines varying from 

 one to two shillings ; in seven of these cases an 

 alibi was established, and nine were excused fines 

 on the score of poverty. William Rede was 

 presented for having kept a coppice closed for 

 seven years which ought to lie open, to the great 

 hurt of the king's deer. Among those claiming 

 chartered liberties in the Buckinghamshire forests 

 were the abbots of Oseney and Nutley, the prior 

 of Frideswide, the prioress of Studley, and the 

 provost of Oriel College. 4 ' 



The dissolution of the monasteries was, in 

 Buckinghamshire as elsewhere, sadly disastrous 

 to the woodlands of the county. In 1541, 

 commissioners were appointed to regulate the 

 sales of the coppices of Bundon and Echyllthorn 

 at Horwood, in Whaddon Chase, late the pro- 

 perty of St. Al ban's Abbey. At the same time 

 other commissioners were appointed for the sale of 

 Honers Wood, late the property of Missenden 

 Abbey." 



The priory of Tickford, Newport Pagnel, 

 was surrendered to Wolsey in 1525, but on the 

 cardinal's fall came to the crown, when the 

 lands surrounding the house were turned into a 

 deer park. 



A certificate was presented by Thomas 

 Tavener and Robert King, 'prescvators of the 

 Queenes Majesties woods within her highness 

 Parkes of Tyckford and Hanslopp,' as to the 

 felling of woods and trespasses done in the years 

 1587-8. In January, 1587, there was a sale in 

 Tickford Park of underwood, when six trees 

 were taken out of the coppice, valued at 4, 

 without the leave of the woodward or his 

 deputy. George Annesley, the park keeper, 

 was charged with selling forty loads of ' Browse 

 wood ' (winter food for deer) at 5</. a load, 

 amounting to the sum of ^10, and also with 

 damaging the newly-cut coppice by turning into 

 it horses and colts, and by mowing divers places, 

 amounting to a loss valued at 13 61. 8</. The 

 preservators recommended that a sale should 

 shortly be made, for the benefit of the crown, 

 of two or three hundred trees, which could well 



be spared in Newton Pagnel, the Mersh End, 

 and Tickford.* 1 



In the reign of James I Bernwood Forest, 

 Shotover, and Stowood, were required to furnish 

 timber for the Royal Navy, and a pretty quarrel 

 arose between the shipwrights sent to the 

 forest and the keepers and other officials as to 

 the proper ownership of certain perquisites, the 

 chips ' which fall out to be made in the squaring 

 and sising of the tymber.' These the repre- 

 sentatives of the Navy claimed as ' a fee and dutie 

 ever belonging to them in all places where they 

 have been ymployed in like seruice and never 

 challenged from them untill nowe.' The keepers, 

 always keen on making a profit from the sale of 

 wood, naturally took a different view, and the 

 matter was referred to London. The authori- 

 ties, favouring the claim of the shipwrights, Peter 

 Pett'* and Daniel Duck, decided that they 

 should not be robbed of what was certainly ' the 

 proceed of theire owne worke and labour and 

 yeeldyng no browse for the deere, to give colour 

 of claime to the kepers,' with the result that a 

 warrant to this effect was issued to John Denham, 

 farmer of the forest of Bernwood.* 3 



A commission was issued in 1623 for the 

 disafforesting of Bernwood. Sir John Dormer 

 and the other commissioners allotted to every 

 freeholder in the forest in the proportion of 10 

 acres for every 100 acres, as well as 230 acres 

 for the poor of the district in the counties of 

 Bucks and Oxon. But a dispute arose as to the 

 proportions, and a jury was summoned in the 

 following year to set out the allotments. A bill, 

 however, was filed in chancery, and judgement 

 was declared in 1632, whereby the forest tenants 

 of the two counties obtained the allotment of 

 577^ acres, leaving 1,397$ acres to the crown.* 4 



Not only was the forest law in operation, in 

 however modified a form, in Bernwood Forest 

 proper until the end of the reign of James I, but 

 occasional swainmote courts were held outside 

 its boundaries, as, for example, in Whaddon Chase, 

 as late as the reign of Henry VIII. The general 

 history of this chase is indeed of considerable 

 interest. 



The entries in Domesday Book are decisive as 

 to the well-wooded character of Whaddon and 

 the neighbouring manors," and at a very early 

 period Walter Giffard, earl of Buckingham,'* 

 granted to the priory of St. Faith at Longue- 

 ville all Horwood, except the fee of Durand, 

 with tith:s of wood, pannage, fishpool, and all 



45 Forest Proc. K.R. bdle. I, No. 9. 



" Exch. Accts. Forest Proc. K. R. bdle. I, 



M Accts. Exch. bdle. 149, Nos. I, 2. 



2 



11 Ibid. bdle. 557, No. 13. 



" One of the famous family whose history it traced 1 

 in the Ancestor, x, 147. 



" S.P. Dom. Jas. I, Ixxx, 54 ; cf. Cal. S.P. Dom. 

 Jai. I (161 1-18), pp. 85, 125. 



M Lipscombe, Bucks, i, 53-4. 



- V.C.H. Bucks, i. For the account of Whaddoa 

 No. 10. Chase Mr. C. H. Vellacott is responsible. 



14 Round, Cal. DM. Fratut, 75. 

 137 18 



