SPELMAN'S LIST OP FORESTS. 133 



spot with charcoal made from the neighbouring woods, 

 there is no wonder that the timber should have been 

 rapidly thinned. There is a tradition in the neighbour- 

 hood, that the massive iron railing which encloses St. 

 Paul's Churchyard was forged from the ore smelted in the 

 forest.* Such things were ! Now, half the timber remain- 

 ing in its woodlands would hardly suffice for the manufac- 

 ture of the rails of one of the iron roads which traverse 

 it."t 



Section VII.— Sir Henry Spelman's List of 

 English Forests. ' 



The first forest laws of which we have any record were 

 passed in the reign of Canute the Great in 1016, and were 

 extremely severe and savage. The power granted .by these 

 laws enabled the kings to enclose any tract of forest they 

 pleased, or to plant new forests ; and this power was exer- 

 cised with the utmost tyranny. Some details have been 

 given of the devastation committed by William .the Con- 

 queror, when he formed the new forest in Hampshire. 

 Under the Norman kings the breadth of land covered 

 with forests greatly increased. In ]_the reign of Henry II. 

 there was, according to Fitz-Stephen, a monk who lived at 

 that period, a large forest round London, ' in which were 

 woody groves ; in the covers whereof lurked bucks and 

 does, wild boars and bulls ; ' and these woods remained for 

 centuries afterwards. Sir Henry Spelman, a celebrated 

 antiquary, who lived in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, 

 gives a list of English forests, which, though not perhaps 



* According to Cunningham's Handbook of London, this iron railing, of more than 

 2500 palisades, was cast at Lamberhurat, in Kent, at a cost of upwards of £11,202 Os 6d. 



t Up to the year 1720, Sussex was the principal seat of the iron manufacture in Eng- 

 land ; the consumption of fuel was so great that more than one Act was passed for the 

 preservation of the timber ; but the wood still decreased, and by degrees the furnaces 

 were disused, and the manufacture transferred to districts where coal was abundant. 

 The last furnace, at Ashburnham, was blown out in 1827, 



