sovereigns in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries with royal gifts
of both timber and venison from the stores of Sherwood. We may take as
an example of such royal gifts those made by Henry III. from different
parts of Sherwood between the years 1231 and 1234. The venison during
this period included three roes to Robert de Lexington; three bucks and
four does to the Earl of Huntingdon; five bucks and twenty does to the
Bishop of Carlisle for his park at Melbourne; three bucks to the Dean
of St. Martin’s, London; six bucks to Walter de Evermuth; two bucks
and eight does to Hugh Despenser; a buck to John, son of Geoffrey; two
harts to John de Stuteville; two bucks to Robert de Hareston; seven
bucks to the Bishop of Carlisle; five bucks to William of York; three
bucks to William Bardolph; five bucks and a hart to William de Albini;
and ten bucks to the Bishop of Lincoln.
During the same period the gifts of wood included five oaks to Gilbert
Spigurnel, to make a mill; five oaks and thirty tie-beams to the
chaplain of Hugh de Burgh; thirty oaks to the Priory of Lenton, for the
works of their church; twenty oaks to Brian de Insula; five lime trees
to the Franciscan Friars of Nottingham to make their stalls; thirty
oaks to the Dean of St. Martin’s, London, for timber for his chancel at
Elm; forty rafters to Brother Robert de Dyva; ten oaks to Robert Lupus;
and fifteen oaks to William de Albini, for making rafters.
In connection with timber, it may be mentioned that a great provision
of wood was made from Sherwood early in the year 1316, when the
Parliament was held at Lincoln. The Archbishop of York’s great wood at
Blidworth was at that time in the King’s hands, as the see was vacant,
and Edward II. ordered the forest-keeper to deliver to the sheriff
fifty leafless oaks out of that wood, to be used for making charcoal,
and for boards for trestle tables. Thirty oaks from parts of the forest
near the Trent were to be despatched to Nottingham for firewood in the
King’s hall against the ensuing Parliament, and thirty more for the
King’s chambers. It should always be remembered in connection with
woods in private ownership within royal forests, that there was no
power of felling timber or cutting wood, save for immediate personal
use, without a direct warrant. Thus, in 1316, it is entered on the
Close Rolls that Edward II. authorised Ralph de Crumbwell to fell and
sell as he pleased twenty acres of his wood at Lambley within Sherwood
Forest, as a compensation for his losses when engaged in the King’s
service in Scotland.
A particularly interesting and exceptional use of the excellent timber
of this forest occurs on the Close Rolls towards the end of the year
1323–24, when an expedition was about to be undertaken into the Duchy
of Aquitaine. The Sheriff of Nottingham and his carpenters were
instructed to procure as many oaks and other suitable trees out of the
forest, as were necessary for the construction of nine springalds and
a thousand quarels. Springalds were military engines of the catapult
kind, whilst quarels were a heavy form of arrows with iron heads which
these engines discharged.
Continuing a brief account of some of the more important circumstances
with regard to the timber of Sherwood, it may be mentioned that at the
Forest Pleas of 1334, the Roll of amercements of persons convicted of
vert trespass at the Attachment Courts at more than fourpence (which
could only be amerced at the Eyre), embraced upwards of seven hundred
and fifty trespassers, varying in value from sixpence for green boughs
or dry trunks, to two shillings for a single oak. These values had been
paid to the verderers at the time when the Attachment Court had been
held; the additional fines imposed by the justices varied from one to
two shillings. This list of vert trespasses is after all not a very
serious one, when it is remembered that it was about half a century
since the last Eyre had been held. In the following century the supreme
courts of the justices were held with almost equal rarity, and by the
time of Henry VII. the complaints as to the gradual destruction of the
oaks of Sherwood, both young and old, became numerous.
The general custom which prevailed in most of England’s royal forests,
of the tenants within the jurisdiction being permitted to use wood
for the repair or rebuilding of their houses, for the construction of
hedges, and for the purposes of fuel, obtained throughout Sherwood.
At the last regular Eyre, held in 1538, the justices made two special
orders affecting the forest timber, namely, that no hedgebote nor
firebote was to be taken by the tenants themselves, but only by the
deliverance of the woodward, nor any housebote without the deliverance
of the keeper as well as the woodward; and in the second place it was
ordered that no one was to fell any even of his own wood for any intent
“without the especiall lycense of the kynge his highnesse, or the
justice of the foreste, and that none from hencesforthe do take aine
woode for bleaching.”
An exact inventory of the trees of the most valuable part of this
forest was taken in the year 1609. There were at that time 21,009 oak
trees in Birkland, and 28,900 in Bilhagh; but the majority of them are
described as being past maturity. In August 1624 a most destructive
forest fire occurred, arising from some carelessness in the preparation
of charcoal. This fire spread rapidly over an area four miles in length
by one and a half in breadth. The abatement of the wind, and the
trenches dug by a whole army of men with spades, picks, and shovels,
happily checked the fire just as it was approaching the great wood
which then stretched from Mansfield to Nottingham.
Both trees and venison suffered severely during the disturbances
that preceded the establishment of the Commonwealth. During the days
of Oliver Cromwell, and with still greater frequency at subsequent
dates, a considerable number of Sherwood oaks were felled for the
navy. Various other grants for exceptional purposes on a large scale
contributed to the rapid reduction of the forest timber. Thus, in
1680, the inhabitants of Edwinstowe were permitted to fell 200 oaks
in Birkland and Bilhagh for the repair of their parish church, which
had been seriously damaged by the fall of the spire. In 1686, the oak
trees of this part of the forest, including a number that were hollow
or decayed, only totalled 37,316, and by 1790 they were still further
reduced to 10,117.
“From 1683 onwards, the area of the forest was being constantly
curtailed; and in that year 1270 acres out of the hays of Bilhagh and
the White Lodge, were sold to the Duke of Kingston to be enclosed
within his park of Thoresby. At the beginning of the next century,
about 3000 acres of the previous open forest were impaled to protect
the deer under the auspices of the Duke of Newcastle, who was their
keeper; this was called the New Park, and is now known as Clumber Park.
Between 1789 and 1796 inclusive, Acts were passed for the enclosure
of Arnold Forest, Basford Forest, Sutton in Ashfield Forest, Kirkby
in Ashfield Forest, and Lenton and Radford Forest, whereby 8248
acres were brought into cultivation. When Major Rooke published his
interesting _Sketch of the Ancient and Present State of Sherwood
Forest_ in 1799, the parts of the forest that still remained to the
Crown were the hays of Birkland and Bilhagh, which had a total extent
of 1487 acres.”[46]
A most notable use of the grand oaks of Sherwood occurred in the days
of Charles II., when the largest and most substantial of the beams used
in the construction of the new St. Paul’s, by Sir Christopher Wren,
came from this district. The papers at Welbeck Abbey include a letter
from the great architect, of April 4, 1695, addressed to the steward of
the Duke of Newcastle. Therein he states the measurements of the “great
Beames” which he then required. They were to be “47 ft. long, 13 inches
at the small end, of growing timber and as near as can be without sap.”
Though the glories of Sherwood as a vast open forest land have long
since passed away, there is still much fine timber to be noted on the
old forest stretches of Birkland and Bilhagh, as well as a few noble
groups of ancient oaks, as at Haywood, near Blidworth. Within, too,
the present five deer parks of the county, all of which were within
the forest confines in ancient days--namely, the parks of Thoresby,
Welbeck, Rufford, Wollaton, and Annesley--portions of the ancient
forest timber undoubtedly remain. In some cases the relics of the grand
old oaks are but shattered fragments of their original magnificence.
The Methuselah of the forest, the Greendale oak in Welbeck Park, would
have perished long ago had it not been for the extreme care taken
to prop and bind up its shattered members; but it still possesses
considerable vitality. In 1724 the great gap hollowed through its
centre by age and decay was cut away to such a height and width that
“a carriage and six, with cocked-hat coachman on the box, drove
through the tree with the bride of the noble owner; three horsemen
riding abreast were able to pass through, a feat which has been often
accomplished.” Several of the greater and more venerable oaks in
other parts of the forest have had fanciful names assigned to them,
perpetuated during recent years by means of picture postcards; but
these titles are for the most part of recent origin. Such are the Major
Oak, the Parliament Oak, and the Shambles Oak.
The deer of Sherwood were of three kinds--red, fallow, or roe. The
roe deer seem never to have been numerous, and they died out at a
comparatively early date, not finding sufficient quietude owing to
the nearness of Nottingham, Mansfield, and other fairly populous
places. These small timid deer require a considerable amount of
rarely-disturbed covert, and Sherwood, notwithstanding its extent, was
intersected by a frequency of roads and byroads. At the Eyre of 1288,
there was a single presentment for killing a roebuck.
The red deer were undoubtedly indigenous to this and other parts of
England, and roamed at large throughout the forest. The royal gifts of
Sherwood deer made by Henry III. and the first three Edwards, consisted
mainly of fallow deer; but it need not be considered from this that
the red deer were few or far between, because the fallow deer were so
much more easily killed or taken alive within the parks where they
were sustained. The majority of cases of venison, as recorded in the
presentments at the different Eyres, were also concerned with fallow
deer; but a fair number of venison transgressors, particularly in the
case of those of good position, were summoned for hunting the wild red
deer. Thus, in 1334, Lord John Grey was found running a herd of hinds
with six greyhounds at Bestwood, of which he killed two; and at the
same court Henry Curzon of Breadsall was fined for killing a hind at
Clipstone. At various different dates in the fourteenth century, royal
releases from prison were granted to offenders who had been caught
hunting the red deer. It may here be noted, as it is often forgotten,
that the terms for red deer are harts and hinds, whilst the fallow deer
are described as bucks and does. The survival at the present day in
this county of eleven public-houses which bear the sign of the White
Hart is an indirect evidence of the former number of the wild deer;
there is also a single instance of a White Hind. This may appear to be
a confusion of terms, but from the earliest days there were occasional
instances of white harts and hinds, as at the present time among red
deer.[47]
The fallow deer were as a rule kept within parks, though, of course,
they naturally strayed at times into the open parts of the forest. The
two oldest of the hays or parks of Sherwood were those of Clipstone and
Bestwood, and there were also those of Birkland, Linby, and Welby, as
early as the days of Henry III.
Among venison offenders it was not at all unusual to find the secular
clergy. Thus, at the Eyre of 1334, the rector of Annesley and the vicar
of Edwinstowe were among the culprits, and fully a score of other
beneficed offenders were presented at different dates. Popular notions,
encouraged by more or less scurrilous ballads, have long ago marked
down the monks and canons of the religious orders as prime offenders
in this respect; but the forest Rolls, which cannot lie, in Sherwood
as elsewhere, prove the very small basis upon which such charges rest.
“Throughout the length and breadth of England, in the extant forest
documents extending over several centuries, only four or five charges
of venison trespass against the religious have been found, and about
a like number for the receipt of venison, or the harbouring of forest
offenders. It is not to be understood that the examination has been
quite thorough, save of a certain number of forests; but it is highly
improbable that the charges against monks or canons regular, if the
search was exhaustive, could not be counted on the fingers of both
hands. And yet at the same time the charges against rectors, vicars, or
parochial chaplains, and the heavy fines, sometimes exceeding a whole
year’s income, are fairly common. No charges have been noticed against
the monks of Rufford or the canons of Newstead, though they were in the
very midst of Sherwood; and yet there was hardly a parish pertaining to
that forest whose vicar or rector was not, at some time, convicted of
deer-slaying with bow and arrows, or with greyhounds.”[48]
When the sixteenth century is reached, definite statistics can usually
be found as to the number of deer in the various royal forests of
England. Henry VIII. appointed a commission in 1531, to view and
certify the number of the deer in the forest and parks of Sherwood. The
red deer at that date numbered 4280, and the fallow deer 1131. The red
deer ranged throughout the forest, with the exception of some 200 in
Bestwood Park. The fallow deer were within the four parks of Bestwood,
Clipstone, Nottingham, and Thorney. Another less detailed return of
1538 of all the deer in the King’s forests and parks north of the
Trent, gives the number of red deer in Sherwood Forest as about 1000;
in Bestwood Park, 700 fallow and 140 red; in Clipstone, 60 fallow and
20 red; in Gringley, 150 fallow.
Queen Elizabeth, in 1599, granted the keepership of the forest district
of Thorneywood, to the north of Nottingham, to John Stanhope, with
licence to hunt, chase, and kill the deer, provided he always found a
hundred head for the use of the Queen.
A considerable amount of detailed information with regard to the
rapidly lessening area of Sherwood Forest, from this date down to 1793,
is to be found in the _Fourteenth Report of Woods and Forests_
which was issued at the latter date. In 1616, it was reported that
there were 1263 red deer in Sherwood Forest, in addition to those in
Thorneywood; another estimate of 1635 made the total 1367. A very
large number of the royal deer not unnaturally disappeared during the
Commonwealth days. In 1661, considerable expenses were incurred by the
transporting of both red and fallow deer from Germany to restock the
forests of Sherwood and Windsor.
Charles II., in 1662, did his best to revive the forest laws of
Sherwood, and appointed his faithful friend William, Earl of Mansfield
and Marquis of Newcastle (afterwards known as the loyal duke) to act
as Lord Chief Justice in Eyre. The business before this revived Forest
Court was so complicated, and required so much legal investigation,
that, though opened at Mansfield in February 1662–63, the proceedings
were not concluded until 1676; they provided a right royal harvest
for the lawyers and attorneys. Claims to special privileges were put
forward by a great variety of persons, including the Archbishop of York
and divers others, such as Sir George Savile of Rufford and Lord Byron
of Newstead, who had succeeded to properties wrenched from monastic
hands. Hosts of minor claimants came from all parts of the forest
and its surroundings, pleading privileges that pertained in old days
to particular townships or parishes. Some of these humbler folk were
unable to resist the attractions of the game as they traversed the old
forest grounds; thus one Thomas Cotton, a blacksmith of Edwinstowe, was
convicted of shooting a hart when actually journeying to attend this
court. He was fined 40s., and had to obtain a bondsman for £40 for his
good conduct during the twelve months.
In 1708 a strongly worded petition was drawn up at Rufford by
representative gentlemen of the north of the county, addressed to the
Crown, complaining of the grievous and almost intolerable burden under
which the landowners laboured by reason of the increase during late
years of the red deer in the Forest of Sherwood. They complained that
so many of the woods had been granted or given away by the Queen’s
predecessors, that but little harbour remained for the deer in the
forest, and that the deer in consequence were scattered about in the
county eating up corn and grass; that their tenants in severe weather
had often to watch all night to keep the deer off; that their servants
were terrified by new keepers, who threaten them if they so much as set
a little dog at the deer. At the same time another general petition to
the like effect obtained 400 influential signatures. It was therein
stated that the red deer had recently increased from 300 to 900, and
that their chief depredations were carried on “in the district called
Hatfield and the whole district of the Clay,” which were parts of the
county outside the forest limits. These petitions met with no favour
at the hands of the Crown; it was argued that to attempt to stint the
number of deer through Parliament would be detracting from the Queen’s
liberties and rights.
The forest, however, was far from being a source of profit during
Anne’s reign. There were four well-paid “forest keepers” and four
“deputy forest rangers”; the winter hay for the deer averaged £100 a
year; whilst £1000 a year was granted to maintain the deer and the new
park at Clumber, and to hunt with two horsemen, forty couple of hounds,
eleven horses, and four grooms.
Reports presented to the Commissioners of Woods and Forests in 1793
showed that there were then no deer in the forest save in Thorney
Woods, of which Lord Chesterfield was keeper. But evidence was given to
the effect that there were a great many deer in Birkland and Bilhagh
until about 1770, when they were killed off, with the assistance of the
inhabitants, by the Dukes of Newcastle and Kingston, and in a short
time the value of the forest farms had materially increased, and the
wheat fields no longer needed to be guarded by horns in the daytime and
by fires at night.
Though the glories of Sherwood as a vast open forest district have long
since passed away, several noble parks occupy some of its choicest
portions. Five of these parks are stocked with deer--namely, Thoresby
(Earl Manvers), Welbeck (Duke of Portland), Rufford (Lord Savile),
Wollaton (Lord Middleton), and Annesley (J. P. Chaworth Musters, Esq.).
The first two of these have herds of red as well as of fallow deer.
It is quite possible that some of these may fairly claim to be the
descendants of those which used to roam at will through the woods and
glades of old Sherwood Forest in medieval days.
ROODS, SCREENS, AND LOFTS IN NOTTINGHAMSHIRE
BY AYMER VALLANCE
ARNOLD.--William Stretton, writing about 1820, noted:--“The Gothic
screen of oak is still remaining. The corbels and holes for the timbers
to support the rood-loft still remain, with the stone staircase in the
south-east angle.” The screen disappeared at the “restoration” in 1877.
The rood-stairs survive, concealed behind the pulpit.
ATTENBOROUGH.--The rood-stair, of which only a part remains, was
contained in the south pier of the chancel arch. The door intended
for issue onto the rood-loft is now blocked, but the entrance at the
bottom, with a cambered head, is situated in the north-east corner of
the south aisle.
AVERHAM (October 1911).--A somewhat plain example of a late-fourteenth
or early-fifteenth century screen, rectangular in construction, stands
in the chancel opening. Its total length is 16 ft. 9 in. by 9 ft. high.
It comprises thirteen compartments of average centring of 1 ft. 2½ in.,
_i.e._ five compartments on either hand of the doorway. The latter has
a clear opening of 3 ft. 5½] in., and comprises three compartments,
their two muntins being cut off by the horizontal door-head. The
wainscot is 4 ft. 1 in. high, with head-tracery to the depth of 9
inches, consisting of one continuous run supported by four vertical
mouldings, making five panels on each side of the doorway. The south
section of this tracery appears to be genuine, but the north section is
all modern except 14 inches’ length immediately north of the doorway.
All the flat panelling of the wainscot is modern. From the middle
rail to the cord-line measures 44 in., the tracery in the head of the
fenestration being 9 in. deep. This tracery is flat on the eastward
face. The ornament attached to the west front of the lintel is modern.
BALDERTON.--“A most beautiful, richly moulded Perpendicular oak screen
(_circa_ 1475), having a figure of a monk with his arms crossed,
and a globe below his foot, on the western face; and another of the
Virgin and Child on the eastern face.” The screen is rectangular in
construction, and comprises eight compartments, the two middle ones of
which go to form the doorway.
BEAUVALE (Carthusian Priory).--From the foundation of the monastery in
1343, the church kept its original plan, an aisleless parallelogram,
unchanged. The width of the nave, 27 ft., was, therefore, the length of
the transverse screens, which disappeared at, or after, the surrender
on 18th July 1539. “No trace of the pulpitum,” write Rev. A. Du Boulay
Hill and Mr. Harry Gill, “can be seen in the standing walls,” nor did
the excavations in 1908 disclose any pulpitum foundations.
BECKINGHAM.--The will of Robert Hall, dated 28th May 1529, contains the
clause: “_do et lego fabrice crucifixorii de_ Bekyngham,” 15s.; and
William Hall, by will dated 10th October 1538, bequeathed his “bodie
to bee buried in the churche of Bekyngham afore the rood-lofte.” Rev.
Dr. Cox writes (1911) to say that in the tower archway stands the
middle portion of the chancel screen, consisting of the doorway and two
more bays, or compartments, with very fine tracery, of late-fifteenth
century workmanship. The doorway (now blocked) which led from the
rood-stair onto the top of the rood-loft, is visible in the east wall
of the nave, to south of the chancel-arch.
BILSTHORPE.--The upper and lower doorways, square-headed, of the
rood-stairs, now walled up, are clearly perceptible in the north side
of the nave. Externally nothing of the old staircase remains.
BLYTH (October 1911).--The church of the Benedictine Priory (dissolved
in February 1535–36) and the parochial church were under the same
roof; but the screening arrangements are by no means clear. That the
wall which cuts off the first bay of the nave below the crossing was
built previously to the Reformation is evident from the fact that the
westward surface of the filling was painted, late in the fifteenth, or
in the early part of the sixteenth, century with the subject of the
Doom, many traces of which remain to this day. It may be that this
was the site of the pulpitum, in which case the walling simply meant
heightening the front of the pulpitum until the space was filled to the
roof. In the foot of the wall is a doorway (now blocked) 5 ft. 5 in.
wide by 6 ft. 6 in. high, with a cambered head. Presumably this door
was the former entrance of the pulpitum-passage into the quire.
[Illustration:
_Photo: Mr. Arthur Lineker._
BLYTH PRIORY CHURCH: SCREEN IN THE NAVE.]