NATURAL HISTORY. 
57 
the vicinity of Worcester,^ evidently of Saxon deri- 
vation, fully prove. Many parts of the county, also, 
as Woolershill, Wolverley, &c. were so denominated 
from the numerous wolves that haunted their neigh- 
bourhood. We have no record of the final extinction 
of these ferocious animals, but they probably con- 
tinued as long as the line of Plantagenet sat on the 
throne. They were so numerous in the reign of Ed- 
wardl. that Peter Corbet was directed by a special man- 
date of that monarch to superintend and assist in the 
destruction of them ; but they were perhaps hardly 
exterminated till after the termination of the civil 
wars between the houses of York and Lancaster, 
since, even in our own times, during the invasion 
of France by the Allied Monarchs, the wolves so 
increased in that country as to render travelling 
dangerous, entering the villages even in the day 
time. The stag probably was finally extinguished 
in the county when Malvern Chace was disafforested 
in the reign of Charles I. The forest or chace 
of Malvern extended to the banks of the Severn, and 
the red Earl of Gloucester Gilbert de Clare, who 
received it as a portion with Joan the daughter 
of Edward I. (by which means it lost its title of 
forest and became a chace) to end a dispute with the 
^ Barbourne and Bevereye ; the former is a brook which running from Tibberton 
and Perdiswell enters the Severn at the Old Water Works ; the latter is an islet in 
the Severn a little below Grimley. Bourn is the Saxon appellation for a l)rook, 
and Bevereye signifies the island of the beavers. There is an old Saxon sculpture 
over the north door of Ribbesford Church, one mile below Bewdley, which seems 
to represent the death of a beaver. It is certainly more like a beaver than a 
salmon, to which it has hitherto been usually referred. 
