A HISTORY OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE 



Barkley, had been ' converted to an alehouse ' and was ' now fitt to harbor theves and enemes to the 

 game.' ' Each of the four keepers received 405. a year and certain known casual profits, while the 

 ranger took an annual fee of 3 8x. i%d. These payments were made by the sheriffs of Bristol, 

 who were allowed an equivalent reduction in their 'accompt in the Chequer.' 



Furthermore ' sheepe and goates l most pernitious cattle, intolerable in a forest make a farr 

 greater shewe then his Majesties game ; as for the goats they have confounded by their barkeing 

 and pelling of the barke infinite manie faire hollyes the chefest browse now in use,' while the 

 ' coale mines also devoure the principall hollies in all partes of the forest for the supportation of 

 their pitts ' and generally impair the herbage. 



Formerly the keepers used to cut down oak boughs ' as bigge as a soare or soarell could turned 

 over with his head' and sell the wood to their own profit. This however had been lately discon- 

 tinued, but only apparently because ' euerie pretended owner presumes at his owne will to cutt 

 downe' his woodes.' The keepers were thus forced to take < bush browse ' or else famish the deer 

 in winter, and even then were deprived by the woodwards of every division of the ' offal ' of the 

 ' small browse,' so that they became ' the more remisse in gaurdinge and releveinge his Majesties 



game.' 



Other complaints were made as to the superfluity of cottages ' raysed upon the forest ' and 

 maintained under the toleration of the Statute for the erecting of houses in mining districts. The 

 annual value of the coals taken was by deposition 200, but Norden understood ' by relation ' that 

 it should be 500. 



The largest claim was one of 1,380 acres by Mr. Thomas Chester, but the surveyor had heard 

 that 'there was a judgement for the king* as to this property. Many timber trees had here been 

 felled and sold, and the waste was still going on, while Player the ' generall fermer of the coales ' 

 dug daily in the same division. ' Considering the judgement it were fit he were inhibited quousque.' 

 Chester's bailiff had also received 32*. as ' wood-lease silver ' from Filwood Chase payable at 

 Martinmas. The Lord Barkley and Lady Newton claimed 1,350 acres ; Sir Henry Billingsley 

 810 and Richard Barkley 540, while smaller holders with 218 brought up the whole area of the 

 chase to some 4,298 acres. 2 



It is quite clear from this survey that Kingswood had, even in the early seventeenth century, 

 ceased to be of much importance as a covert for deer, while waste of the vert and the extension 

 of coal-mining were rapidly destroying its early character. The later history of the forest, largely 

 made up of efforts on the part of the Crown to reassert its rights, and the resistance, active and 

 passive, of grantees and squatters accompanied by the further deterioration of the remaining wood- 

 land, cannot be told here. When in the eighteenth century Whitefield 3 preached to the miners of 

 Kingswood, and noted the tears that furrowed white runnels on their grimy cheeks, the king's deer 

 had long vanished and little timber still remained. 



The history ot the Forest of Dean 4 can be carried back beyond the Conquest, for under the 

 Confessor three thanes had held land in Dene free from geld by the service of guarding the forest. 6 

 The tract between the Severn and the Wye has always been the most heavily wooded in the shire, 

 though even at this early period assarts had been made and the iron forges had begun to thin the 

 brushwood if not the timber, for doubtless the render of iron 6 from Gloucester in King 

 Edward's days came from Dean. The precise extent of this royal forest at the Conquest is 

 unknown, but its boundaries at least on the south and east may not have differed widely from its 

 present limits. 7 Quite early in his reign King William had made acquaintance with the Forest of 

 Dean, for he was hunting here in 1069 when news was brought of the northern rising. 8 At his 

 command 9 two manors, Hiwoldestone and Wigheiete, had been added to the forest before the date 

 of Domesday, and after his death the further expansion of the area subject to forest law was deter- 

 mined as much by the necessities of revenue as by considerations of sport. According to the finding 

 as to the ancient metes and bounds recorded on the Close Roll 10 of 1 2 Henry III, this extension of 

 the forest to Gloucester and Newent on the north and Chepstow on the south had taken place 



1 This, as Mr. Philip Baylis kindly points out, illustrates Manwood's dictum that neither goats nor sheep 

 were commonable in a forest. As to the case of sheep, compare the almost contemporaneous disputes in the 

 forest of Essex or Waltham ; V.C.H. Essex, ii, ' Forestry.' 



1 For a later survey of 1652 see Rudder, Gloucestershire, 458, n.w. The acreage within the metes and 

 bounds there given was 3,432 acres and 2 roods. 



3 Gillies, Life of Whitejield (1772), 38. 



4 We are indebted in this section to the valuable assistance and suggestions of Mr. L. F. Salzmann, B.A. 



5 Dom. Bk. 167^. Dom. Bk. 162*. 



7 C. S. Taylor, Dom. Sure, of Glouc. 25. The present area of the Forest of Dean proper as denned 

 by the Act of 183 1 is about 24,000 acres. Outside this area to the west are the High Meadow Woods pur- 

 chased by the Crown in the early part of the last century, and comprising within the Gloucestershire 

 boundary nearly 3,000 acres. 



' Ordericus, Hist. Eccl. (Migne), 317. Dom. Bk. \66b, \6-ja. 10 m. lotl. 



266 



