FOREST OF DEAN. 249 
Cinderford, in the Forest, derives its name from these 
heaps. 
As in the case of most of the Royal Forests, there 
is no record of the origin of that of Dean. It is first 
mentioned in Domesday Book as having been exempted 
from taxes by Edward the Confessor. William the 
Conqueror is known to have visited it occasionally for 
the purpose of hunting the deer. He was there in 
1069, when he received tidings that the Danes had 
invaded Yorkshire, and had taken its capital. He is 
reported to have sworn a terrible oath by “the 
splendour of the Almighty,” that “not one North- 
umbrian should escape his revenge,” and he well kept 
his oath. * 
The Forest, like others, was greatly enlarged by the 
Norman kings succeeding the Conqueror, in the sense 
that they applied the forest laws to a great area of 
land in private ownership, extending up to Gloucester 
and to the Severn and Wye. These boundaries were 
again reduced by Henry III. and Edward L., in conse- 
quence of the grave complaints of the people as to the 
force of a great wheel that drives a pair of bellows twenty feet 
long, all that iron is extracted out of the cinders, which could not 
be forced from it by the Roman foot blast. And in the Forest of 
Dean and thereabouts and as high as Worcester, there are great and 
infinite quantities of these cinders, some in vast mounts above 
ground, some under ground, which will supply the iron works for 
hundreds of years, and these cinders are those which make the prime 
and best iron and will make less charcoal than doth the ironstone.” 
—Nicholls, Forest of Dean, p. 223. 
* Ib. p. 7. 
