A HISTORY OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE 



cripple the navy of England, and it has been stated J that Burleigh was so moved by this discovery 

 as to institute in Windsor Forest a systematic scheme for rearing oak woodlands from acorns. Experi- 

 ments in the Elizabethan Age with acorns, beech-mast, and chestnuts, too often however proved 

 abortive, owing perhaps to the depredations of field mice, 2 and the efforts made to re-afforest in 

 Gloucestershire in the seventeenth century were generally by planting. 



In the reign of James I various proposals were suggested to the king and his advisers for 

 increasing the profits to be derived from the Forest of Dean. In one survey 3 and estimate the 

 forest was said to contain of ' greate standing woodes 1 5,000 acres, parte beinge tymber and parte 

 other, the most parte well sett, the lawndes not accompted." It was, however, reported to be so 

 wasted and of so ill condition that the preservation of the woods would neither yield pleasure to the 

 hunter nor profit to the owner. On the skirts the waste had been especially serious, and the timber 

 generally converted to ' dotards.' Numbers of ' poore creatures ' lived on the spoil of the forest 

 wood, while by negligence of former officers the inhabitants have ' much insulted by cuttinge of 

 trees.' As to the ten ' woodwards or baylyfes of fee,' 'experience proueth that they, theire tenauntes 

 and servantes are as greate spoilers as any others.' In conclusion, it was pointed out that the con- 

 version of the wood to ' coles for makinge iron ' or the selling of the timber by the ton was almost 

 equally profitable, but perhaps rather more could be got from the ironworks. In 1611 a grant* 

 was made to William, earl of Pembroke, of the castle of St. Briavel and of the Forest of Dean, and 

 all lands, mines, and quarries belonging thereto, the timber and underwood being excepted, on a 

 forty years' lease, at the yearly rent of 83 13;. 4^., and an increase rent of 3 8s., and he also 

 obtained for a further payment an annual grant of wood for his ironworks. Some care, however, 

 seems to have been taken to ensure a recovery in the wasted portions of the forest, as on 20 June, 

 161 1, 5 we hear of money being paid for enclosing and fencing coppices in the Forest of Dean, and 

 a little later a warrant was issued to the Earl of Pembroke and his deputy-constable, Sir Walter 

 Mountague, charging them to preserve the woods there and signify His Majesty's displeasure against 

 recent spoilers. 6 As a result of the Earl of Pembroke's lease, riots took place, the cutting down of 

 wood for his works being resented 7 by the men of the forest, who were probably stirred up by 

 iron-masters already settled there, while the free miners asserted their claims to continue their 

 industry. An information against certain of the miners was filed in the Exchequer, and this 

 resulted in an order 8 of the court, which was practically a compromise, though regarded by the 

 miners as to some extent a record in their favour, and a confirmation of their customary right, 

 since no new diggers were to be allowed, 'but only such poor men as were inhabitants of the said 

 forest.' 



Other leases beside that to the Earl of Pembroke were granted in the reigns both of James I 

 and his successor, and some of them led to serious disturbances. On 21 March, 1631, 500 

 persons, 9 with two drums, two colours, and a fife, assembled with guns and pikes before the house 

 of Robert Bridges of Bicknor, a servant of Lady Villiers, a lessee, under letters patent, and threw 

 down 100 perches of newly-made ditching, and ended by proclaiming with an 'O yes' that if 

 Bridges re-erected it against May Day next they would be ready to do him the like service again. 

 There exists incontrovertible evidence 10 that the rioters had considerable sympathy and even 

 assistance from the gentry of the forest. One ringleader, 11 William Vertue, attached by John Wragg, 

 a messenger of the Star Chamber, turned the tables on his captor by having him arrested on a 

 trumped-up suit for $oo in a local piepowder court, and Wragg, carried protesting to gaol, was 

 hardly used, though he showed the Council's warrant for Vertue's removal. But Vertue was 

 ultimately fined jioo, and suffered a year's imprisonment. Even Peter Simon 12 the curate of 

 Newland was suspected of complicity in the riot, and haled before the bishop of Winchester on a 

 charge of upholding the doctrine of the equality of all mankind, only to explain painfully that, 

 on the contrary, he had always maintained ' that there is upon kings and princes, God's character, 

 which makes their persons sacred as God's anointed.' 



1 Menzies, Forest Trees and Woodland Scenery, 132. With regard to this story, however, it is worth 

 notice that Dr. Cox in his Royal Forests, p. 299, attributes Burleigh's order to 1580. 



I Standish, New Directions of Experience Jor the Increasing of Timber and Firewood (1615), 14. Cf. the 

 plague of mice or voles which visited both the Forest of Dean and the New Forest in the years 1813-15; 

 Nicholls, Hist, of Forest of Dean, 95. 



* Caesar Papers (B.M.), Lansdowne MS. 166, fol. 354. 



4 Third Rep. of Com. of Woods and Forests (1788), II. 



5 Cat. S.P. Dom. Jas. I, 161 1, p. 46. Cal. S.P. Dom. Jas. I, 161 5, p. 296. 



7 S.P. Dom. Jas. I, Ixx, 49 ; cf. similar friction in the case of Sir Wm. Throckmorton in 1618 ; 

 Nicholls, Personalities of the Forest of Dean, 104 et seq. 



^ On information filed by the Attorney General, Hilary, 10 Jas. I. 9 S.P. Dom. Chas. I, clxxxviii, 20. 



18 Cal. S.P. Dom. Chas. I, 1633, p. 151, and cf. the case of the escape of a ringleader, John Williams, 

 alias Skimmington,' and the sheriff's reply, S.P. Dom. Chas. I, cciii, 36. 



II S.P. Dom. Chas. I, cciii, 104. Cal. S.P. Dom. Chas. I, 1631, p. 36. 



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