A FOREST. 
11 
various times dug up by the road-sides several skeletons 
of human beings, and of horses ; they were in general 
but slightly covered with earth ; and though the bones 
were much decayed, yet the teeth were sound, and ap- 
peared most commonly to have belonged to young per- 
sons, and probably had been deposited in their present 
situations at no very distant period of time. With the 
bones of a horse so found there remained the iron head 
of a lance, about a foot long, corroded, but not greatly 
decayed. Unable better to account for these skeletons, 
we suppose that they constituted, when alive, part of 
the forces of General Fairfax, and that they fell in some 
partial encounters with the peasantry when defending 
their property about to be plundered by the foragers of 
his army in 1645, at the time he was besieging the cas- 
tle of Bristol. The siege lasted sixteen or seventeen 
days ; many parties during that time must have been 
sent out by him to plunder us cavaliers, and contention 
would take place. 
It is foreign to my plan to enumerate, and it might 
be difficult to discover, all the changes and revolutions 
which have taken place here ; and I shall merely men- 
tion, that this district formerly constituted a regal forest, 
and we find Robert Fitzharding holding it by grant in 
the time of King John. We have a “ lodge farm,” it is 
true, and the adjoining grange, the “conygar,” i. e. 
coneygard, the rabbit-keeper’s dwelling, may, perhaps, 
have been the situation of the sylvan warren ; but there 
are no remains, or any other indications, of a forest ever 
having been in existence. Names and traditional tales 
are all that remain in most places now to remind us of 
the ancient state of England, or to make credible the 
narratives of our old historians, who lived when Britain 
was a forest. Where shall we look for the remnants of 
that mighty wood, filled with boars, bulls, and savage 
beasts, that surrounded London? Even in our own days, 
heaths, moors, and wilds, have disappeared, so as to 
leave no indications of their former state but the name. 
Woods and forests seem to be the original productions 
of most soils and countries favorable for the abode of 
mankind, as if inviting a settlement, and offering mate- 
