THE FORESTS OF SHROPSHIRE, WORCESTER, WARWICK, AND HEREFORD
SHROPSHIRE
One of the earliest references to a technical forest in Salop is of the
year 1204, when King John issued his charter to certify that he “had
altogether disafforested his forest of Brewood in all respects partaining
to a forest or foresters; wherefore the said forest and the men who dwelt
therein and their heirs were to be disafforested for ever, and quit of
the king and his heirs in all those same respects.” This district and
forest of Brewood was partly in Shropshire and partly in Staffordshire.
Notwithstanding, however, the particularly precise terms of the charter
of 1204, the inhabitants of Brewood were by no means quit of their fickle
and lawless king, for at the forest pleas of 1209, cited by Eyton, the
knights and men of Salop and Stafford living in Brewood gave the king 100
marks to be for ever disafforested, so that they of Salop who had hunted
or taken beasts in the Salop park of Brewood might bear their share with
those of Stafford. From this latter date Brewood seems to have genuinely
ceased to be under forest jurisdiction.
But there are other more interesting records in the time of John as to
Salop forests. The chief forest district of this time was that long known
as Morf Forest. It took its name from the Staffordshire village of Morf,
where the break began between that forest and the forest of Kinver.
Its northern boundary, afterwards maintained, was determined by the
river Worf (passing through Worfield) for several miles before it falls
into the Severn a little above Bridgnorth, and from there it stretched
south to its name-village. For about the first two centuries of the
Norman occupation it was at least eight miles in length and about six in
breadth, but it became curtailed by the forest charter of Henry III., and
still more so in the days of Edward I., and was wholly in the county of
Salop. The bounds are ably dealt with in Eyton’s _Salop_.
Pleas of the forest were held at Shrewsbury on March 14th, 1209, before
Hugh Neville and Peter de Lion. A very curious case was brought before
the justices. A certain hart entered the bailey of the castle of
Bridgnorth through the postern gate; the guards took it and carried it
into the castle. When the forest verderers heard the news, they demanded
of Thomas de Erdinton, the sheriff, what had been done with the hart. He
acknowledged the offence, and promised that his men should come before
the justices, and the town of Bridgnorth was attached for the offence.
Thomas de Erdinton was sheriff of both Salop and Staffordshire through
most of John’s reign, and a royal favourite; the calling of him to
account for such a matter as this by the local verderers is a proof of
the stringency of the forest laws at that date.
Another interesting case at this eyre is set forth in the translation
given by Mr. Turner, involving the seeking sanctuary in a church.
“Richard of Holton, Wilkin of Eastlegh, Hulle of Hinton, and Hulle
Roebuck, the serjeants of the county, found venison in the house of
Hugh le Scot. And Hugh fled to the church; and when the foresters and
verderers came thither, they demanded of Hugh whence that venison
came. And he and a certain other person, Roger of Wellington by name,
acknowledged that they had killed a hind from which that venison came.
And he refused to leave the church, but lingered there for a month; and
afterwards escaped in the guise of a woman. And he is a fugitive; and
Roger of Wellington likewise. It is ordered that they be exacted, and
unless they come let them be outlawed.”
The sheriff of Salop was ordered, in 1274, to see that all the venison
taken for the king’s use in the forest of that county was forwarded
without delay to Westminster, to be there delivered to the keeper of the
king’s larder.
In the following year John Fitzhugh, the keeper of the forest, was
instructed to permit Roger de Mortimer or his men to take three harts
for the king’s use. In 1277 the same keeper was instructed to permit the
Bishop of St. Asaph to take all the wood he required for fuel for that
year from the wood of the Wrekin, as the king’s gift.
In 1284 the king issued his mandate to the justices and other forest
ministers not to molest the Bishop of Bath and Wells, as he had the royal
licence to take timber in the king’s demesne lands, hays, and woods
within the bounds of the forest of Salop, for the construction of a
manor house at Acton Burnell, his native place. Two years later a still
wider and exceptional licence was granted to Robert the bishop and to
Hugh Burnell, his brother, in consideration of the great services the
bishop had rendered the king from his earliest years, to fell and take
away to his manor great and small timber, without livery, view, or other
impediment in the woods of Candover, Wolstanton, Frodsley, Hope Bowdler,
Corston, and Rushbury, within the forest bounds.
Space does not suffice to treat further of the forest of Morf, or, as
it was sometimes called, the forest of Bridgnorth, but in connection
with this county, rather than Worcestershire, brief attention must be
given to Bewdley forest, which, under its more ancient style of Wyre
forest, was so vast a district that it gave its name to a whole county;
for Wyre-ceastre, or Worcester, was a Roman station in this forest. When
the days of Norman forestry arrived, the primeval state of this great
woodland district had materially changed. Wyre forest at that period no
longer extended in an unbroken sweep along the Severn to Worcester; but
though a portion of its southern extremity was in Worcestershire, by far
the larger part of it occupied the south of Shropshire. Eyton gives good
reasons for supposing that the Shropshire part of Wyre forest, pertaining
to the great manors of Cleobury and Kinlet, belonged to the Crown in
Saxon days, but that subsequently it went to William Fitz-Osborn, Earl of
Hereford, and then to Ralph Mortimer. The forest rule that the Mortimers
endeavoured to maintain, together with the persistence in the use of
the term “forest” rather than the chace, point strongly to its being
originally under sovereign rule. The best summary of the story of Wyre
forest is to be found in Eyton’s _Shropshire_ (iv., 276-9), where he
tells us that at the time when Prince Edward was embarking for Palestine,
in 1270, this forest was fenced for miles to prevent any depredation of
the deer in the adjacent cultivated districts. But Roger de Mortimer took
occasion of his powerful position to enlarge his rights as though royal,
and to level no less than two leagues of this fence, so as to give free
transit to the deer to the great havoc of the country. Moreover, Mortimer
arrogated to himself a right of free chace, not only in Wyre forest, but
in the manor of his tenants at Kinlet and Baveney, and even in those of
the king’s tenants of Stottesden and Bardley, as set forth by the jurors
of Stottesden in the Hundred Rolls of 1274.
The forest of Clee, somewhat further to the north in this county, also
bears witness, by the general maintenance of that name rather than Clee
chase, to its former royal rights. The attempts of the Cliffords to
re-establish therein quasi-royal forest jurisdiction are also dealt with
by Mr. Eyton (v., 196-202).
WORCESTERSHIRE
In early days there was probably no part of England more generally
covered with woodland than the district afterwards known as
Worcestershire. In the Norman time there were five forest districts
within the shire: Wyre, Feckenham, Ombersley, Horewell, and Malvern.
Of Wyre forest mention has just been made under Shropshire. The Crown
maintained certain forest rights over the Worcestershire or Bewdley part
of this ancient forest as late as the time of Elizabeth, as shown by
certificates at the Public Record Office: “Two of her majesty’s regarders
or presservators of woods in Bewdley Park and Forest of Wyre” received
a warrant in 1587 from the Lord President of Marches for felling 200
loads of firewood for use at Her Majesty’s house called “Tycknell”; and
six timber trees were to be supplied for the repair of the west chamber
there, called Yew Lodging, and another one for repairs to the stable.
Henry Blount, of Bewdley, gentleman, was keeper of Bewdley park, and
claimed all the lop and top of these seven timber trees as his fee. The
two regarders, or rather woodwards, reported that a hollow timber tree
had been set on fire in the park, and that they appealed to Blount to
save it; he told them to fell it, which they did, intending it for the
lord president, but Blount seized it. They also reported that no person
was allowed to take out any dead tree, windfall, rootfall, or stub,
“unless the same be first by us vewed and prised and sealed with our
sealinge axe.”
Ombersley forest began at the north gate of Worcester and extended along
the banks of the Severn; it had originally been part of the great forest
of Wyre.
Horewell forest began at the south gate, and extended along the eastern
road to Spetchley and across the Avon. Both Horewell and Ombersley ceased
to be forest districts under the Forest Charter of Henry III.
Malvern forest, or rather chase, extended from the river Teme in the
north towards Gloucestershire in the south, and from the Severn to the
top of the Malvern Hills. In Nash’s _Worcestershire_ (i., lxxiv., etc.)
there is some interesting information as to the considerable rights
pertaining to the lord of the free chase of Malvern, which are discussed
by Mr. Turner in his _Forest Pleas_ (cix.-cxiii.), and clearly point
to the district having once been royal forest. For instance, the dogs
of this extensive chase were lawed twice in seven years. This lawing,
locally termed “hombling,” differed somewhat from the method prescribed
in true forests by the Forest Charter. All dogs that could not or would
not be drawn through a strap of eighteen inches and a barley-corn in
length had the further joints of the two middle claws cut away, for which
operation the owner was amerced in the sum of 3_s._ 1_d._
Leland, _temp._ Henry VIII., says: “The Chase of Malvern is biggar than
Wire or Feckingham, and occupieth a great part of Malverne Hills. Great
Malverne and Little Malverne also is set in the Chase of Malverne.
Malverne Chase (as I hear say) is in length in some places twenty miles.”
It was granted by Edward I. to Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, on
his marriage with Jean d’Acres, the king’s daughter. From that date it
ceased to be under true forest law, being in the hands of a subject; but
down to the reign of Charles I. there were verderers, foresters, and
other ministers of the chase.
The best account of Malvern Chase is that which appeared in volume v. of
the _Journal of Forestry_, by Mr. Edwin Lees.
Feckenham forest, on the east of the county, was of considerable extent.
A perambulation of Edward I. shows that it began at the Foregate,
Worcester, passed to Beverburn by Stowe to Bordesley, round by Evesham to
Spetchley, and so to Sidbury. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries it
was not infrequently termed the forest of Worcester. The following are
some of the references to this forest in the Patent and Close Rolls of
Edward I.:—
Pardon was granted in 1290 to the Bishop of Worcester, John Gifford,
Richard Archer, and Hugh de Aston, for a fine of 500 marks made by the
bishop for himself and the others, for venison and vert trespasses
in Feckenham forest. A pardon was about the same time granted to the
prioress of Westwood for like trespasses. In this year grant was made
to Eleanor the king’s consort, who held the forest by Edward’s grant,
to hold pleas of vert and other trespasses through her stewards and
bailiffs every six weeks, and to take fines due for the same to her own
use, save pleas of venison and those which belonged to the regard and
agistment of the forest; also all attachments of indicted persons and
venison trespassers, provided that all persons indicted of venison were
imprisoned at Feckenham, and then bailed against the next eyre of the
justices. In the same year Walter de Aylesbury was pardoned all venison
trespasses up-to-date, on condition of surrendering his bailiwick in
Feckenham forest. A special commission had been appointed to inquire
into the venison and vert trespasses said to have been committed both
by foresters and other ministers, and this resignation was one of the
results.
Edward II., in 1293, granted for life to James Beauchamp liberty of
hunting with his own dogs, in all the foreign woods and groves without
the great covert of the forest of Feckenham, the hare, fox, badger, and
wildcat whenever he will, save in the fence month; provided that he took
none of the king’s deer, and did not hunt in the warrens.
Licence was granted in 1294, after inquisition, by John de Selvestrode,
keeper of this forest, to Grimbald Pauncefote, who was going to Gascony
on the king’s service, to sell wood to the value of 100 marks out of
such parts of his wood of Bentley, at the least damage to the forest.
When a perambulation was taken of Feckenham forest in 1300, it was stated
there was no forester-of-fee, and no verderer for that part which was
within the county of Warwick.
The king made a considerable sojourn at Feckenham in April, 1301; during
that visit he granted a pardon to William de Stapelhurst for taking a
buck in this forest, and carrying it away.
Feckenham was finally disafforested in 1629.
WARWICKSHIRE
Early references to the forest of Warwickshire seem to apply to that
small part of the Feckenham forest (Worcestershire), which extended into
the south-west border of the former county, lying between the river Arrow
and the boundary of the two shires, and which was added to Feckenham in
the reign of John. The perambulation of 1300 states that there was no
forester nor verderer pertaining to the county, and that at the date of
the coronation of Henry II. there was no forest anywhere in Warwickshire.
The great woodland district of the Forest of Arden is so closely
associated with the north-west of Warwickshire that unless the technical
meaning of forest is borne in mind, the assertion of the jurors, in the
time of Edward I., as to its absence would seem remarkably strange.
HEREFORDSHIRE
When special forest inquisitions were being held in 1219 and again in
1224, particular instructions were issued with reference to a detailed
regard, and mandates were directed to the sheriff and others of
Herefordshire with reference to the forest of Hereford. Probably all that
was meant by that term was the south-east portion of the county that was
included within the bounds and purlieus of Dean forest, Gloucestershire.
A large portion of the hundred of Greytree had been made forest under
Henry II. and John, but this was duly disafforested by the Forest Charter
of Henry III. An entry in the register of Bishop Swinfield shows that
when the bishop was at Ross, on a visitation tour, in 1206, his huntsmen
killed a young stag in his chase of Penyard, but a dispute arose between
the bishop’s servants and the king’s foresters of Dean, whether the place
where the stag was caught was not within the forest. An inquest was held
at Howl Hill, when the jury declared that it was lawfully caught within
the episcopal chase.