An AGISTER'S office was to attend upon the King's woods and lands, and receive and take in cattle by agistment, that is to depasture within the Forest or to feed upon pannage. A RANGER'S proper office was to rechase the wild beasts from the purlieus into the Forest. The times for hunting the various beasts of the Forest were limited thus:proper That of the hart or buck began at the Feast of St. John the Baptist and ended at Holyrood day; that of the hind and doe began at Holy-rood and ended at Candlemas; the chase of the boar began at Christmas and ended at Candlemas; that of the fox began at Christmas and continued till Lady-day; and that of the hare began at Michaelmas and ended at Candlemas. (Dyer, 169.) It is right to observe here, that Burton (p. 71 of his Description of Leicestershire) asserts that "this Forrest of Charnewood, never since the de-afforestation thereof by Henry III., hath had any game or gard thereto." If by these expressions he intended to imply that there never had been any resumption or restoration of Forest privileges, the following pages, and especially the following extract, will prove that he was in error :— "The whole Royalty of the Forest, or Chace of Charnwood (as touching the Swanimote Court), doth belong to these three manors, Sheepshed, Groby, and Whitwick: and all the four Rangers of this Forest do hold lands of these three manors, to perform their office of Rangers and by other services, viz.: Mr. Holt, of Hathern, and Mr. Eyre, of Belton (for his lands in Whatton), two of the Rangers, do hold of the manor of Shepeshed (viz.: Mr. Holt, of my Lord of Rutland's manor, and Mr. Eyre, of Mr. Davenport's manor), and Mr. Danvers, of Swithland, one of the other Rangers (holds his lands in Swithland), of the manor of Groby. Warner, of Markfield, the fourth Ranger, holds of the manor of Whitwick. Every one of these townships or manors ought to have a drift within the liberty of their own manor only, and not to usurp any drift within the manor of Shepeshed; sic è contra. Neither are the tenants of these three townships compellable to come to any Swanimote but such as is kept for the township or manor whereof they are tenants. And therefore Mr. Holt and Mr. Eyre do wrong to their Lords to appear, and their offices of Rangers, at Whitwick Swanimote. And my Lord of Rutland's freeholders and commoners do wrong to their Lord to appear at Whitwick Swanimote; whereas they should only appear at Shepeshed Swanimote, when any is kept. Also, it is wrong that Shepeshed tenants and commoners should be amerced at Whitwick Swanimote, as they have been of late: and now at the last Swanimote, divers of my Lord of Rutland's tenants, and Mr. Davenport's, of Shepeshed Lordship, are amerced, and like to be distrained upon, if my Lord of Rutland do not crave of my Lord of Huntington that he will forbear to distrain them for the aforesaid causes, until a right course be concluded between them by friendly agreement." This extract was transcribed by Mr. Peck, in 1730, from an old manuscript at Garendon : and though it shows that some irregularity had arisen in the holding of these Forest Courts, yet it incontestably proves that, even so late as the period when Garendon was in possession of the Rutland family (about 1621), the Swanimote, at least, exercised its powers. CHAPTER II. WOODY STATE OF THE FOREST DOWN TO THE MIDDLE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. "That wonderful and almost unknown tract of country, Charnwood Forest."-Nichols' West Goscote, p. 918. "Neque enim ullis accedere major Sed veteri de stirpe novo surgentia ramo Et quatuor post lustra nigros visura caminos, Vix lepori hospitium præbent, sylvestribus olim Quæ timidas latebris damas ursosque tegebant."—Vanier, Præd. rusticum. To persons totally unacquainted with the district called Charnwood Forest, the word "Forest" will convey very erroneous ideas of the locality." Why is Charnwood, in which there is scarcely a tree, called a Forest ?" asked one who had long lived within the shadow of its beautiful hills. "Not for the reason for which the Latins have been said to have given a grove its name," (lucus à non lucendo) was the prompt and proper reply. Time was when those bare hills, as well as the valleys at their feet, were covered with majestic oaks when, to use the words of an old tradition, "a squirrel might be hunted six miles without once touching the grouud; and when a traveller might journey from Beaumanor to Bardon, on a clear Summer's day, without seeing the sun." The names of Wood-house, Woodthorpe, the Outwoods, Timberwood Hills, and Charnwood, are all plainly referrible to the period when the Forest was clothed with wood.—We shall endeavour, in the following pages, to trace the changes which the hand of time, or that of man, has wrought. The lover of Nature in her undisturbed wildness, and the votary of "The calm retreat-the quiet shade," may grieve over many of these changes, but he will find much to compensate for them in the conversion of an immense tract of almost unproductive land into fertile fields, increasing our agricultural supply, and greatly adding to the wealth of the proprietors, and to the comfort of the denizens of the Forest. It will be some consolation, too, to find, that though there are some proprietors utterly regardless of the preservation of the natural beauties of the district, there are others so careful of them as not to permit any consideration of pecuniary advantage to induce them to efface the grand and wonderful works of Nature, or the ancient handy-work of man. The name Charnwood is probably derived from Quern, a hand-mill: as rough stones, suitable for making these mills, were found in many parts of the Forest. Dr. Gale, however, thinks the name derived from Guern, an alder, and considers that Querendon, or Querndon, had the same derivation.* The name Aller, or Alder Carr, is, perhaps, somewhat corroborative of this latter etymology. The alder‡ is still found in many parts of Charnwood. In the lower grounds it was probably in former days, as now, the most common tree, and its early-known suitability for charring, and for many ordinary purposes, may have given it an importance which it has long ceased to possess. It should be remembered, too, that Charley is, by many old writers, written Charnley, and the terminations ley and wood only show the difference between the open and the timber-covered ground. Charnwood was, however, at a period long anterior to the Norman Conquest, clothed with all the various kinds of trees found in a natural Forest, and the undulating surface of the ground must have imparted unusual beauty to the woodland scene. No person at all alive to the effects of foliage, can have failed to notice the superior charm of trees growing on declivities, over those growing on flat surfaces. Such an observer will easily draw on his imagination for a picture of sylvan Charnwood, when Nature, and not the hand of man, Milton describes the woody boundaries of EDEN as possessing this advantage of a rising stage for the display of foliage. "the champain head Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides Of stateliest view." * Quernmore Forest, Lancashire, doubtless owes its name to the same origin. + See Gough's Additions to Camden. flourishing in the poorest Forest swamps, and perhaps the most picturesque of any of the aquatic tribe except the weeping willow." A district of ten miles in length and about six in breadth, almost wholly covered with trees and rocks, and containing, perhaps, in early times, many temples of the Druids: the abode, certainly, of those awful and honoured priests of a mystic and imposing form of religion, must doubtless have been of considerable importance to the ancient inhabitants of the country. Charnwood formed part of the ancient Celtic Forest of Arden, which extended from the Avon to the Trent, and the Leicestershire portion was bounded on the east by a line running through High Cross to Barton, in Nottinghamshire. Many of the finest scenes in Shakspeare are laid in the Forest of Arden; and as Leicestershire is supposed to have been founded by Lear, and the seat of his Government, I have sometimes pleased myself with the fancy (especially when I have been in the midst of a pelting storm on the Forest) that Charnwood might have been "the heath" on which Shakspeare imagined Lear's exposure to the storm. That the Romans were well acquainted with it is placed beyond conjecture, by the circumstance of a Roman road intersecting the Forest; by the recent discovery of Roman coins and earthenware, and by the station or stations which, it is presumed, will be acknowledged to have been fixed on one or more of the hills in the Forest range. I have somewhere read, but regret that I cannot now recollect my authority, that when William the Conqueror first broached his design of making the New Forest, some courtier, out of pity to the Hampshire villagers, urged the King to make Charnwood his hunting Forest; and that William sternly asked the remonstrant "whether it was wished that he should break his neck? as he understood Charnwood was full of rocks and caves." Doubtless the Forest was of great note in the feudal times, when hunting the deer was the chief pastime of the nobles, and when laws much more stringent than our present Gamelaws were in force with regard to Forests. The killing of a boar, a deer, or even a hare, indeed, was punished with the loss of the delinquent's eyes, at a time when the killing of a man might be atoned for by paying a moderate fine. Outlawry was also a very frequent punishment for offences of this nature. Scott makes John of Brent say An outlaw I to Forest Laws, And merry Needwood knows the cause. Robin Hood may often have tried the quality of the deer on Charnwood, when Sherwood had too many of the King's men.* At all events, the Forest was in those times frequently enlivened by the hunter's horn, and relieved by the "Lincolne green." Deer, goats, wild hogs, wild sheep, and wild cattle, with all the varieties of the feathered tribe, abounded in the Forest: and previous to the time of Edgar, the district was greatly infested with wolves. Some idea of its state in the 13th century may be formed from the following notes, partly taken from a Perambulation of Shepeshed, taken at Whitwick Castle, Nov. 29th, 1289 (temp. Edvardi primi):—“ Such part of the Forest as lay within the precincts of Barrow, contained a wood, one mile long and four furlongs broad. Other parts are undoubtedly included under Loughborough, where the wood was seven furlongs long * It is remarkable that there is a spot on the south of Bardon Hill still called Robin, or Robin's Butts. and three broad; under Shepeshed, where the wood was one mile long and five furlongs broad, and where it was expressly stated that Godwin, the King's tenant, held also fifty acres of meadow (probably the site of Garendon Park); under Belton, where the wood was a mile long and half a mile broad; under Whitwick, where the wood was a furlong in length and half a furlong broad, and where the Earls of Leicester had a Castle, a considerable Park, and a Manor, to which many of the neighbouring villages are still appendants; under Ovretone (probably that part of Cole Orton called Thringstone), where a ploughed land lay waste; under Stantone, where the ancient wood was five furlongs long and two broad, and in another part (Bardon) were four acres of wood; under Markfield, where the wood was six furlongs in length and three broad; under Grobi (including the site of Newtown and Bradgate), where the wood was two miles long and half a mile broad; under Turcheleston (Thurcaston), perhaps including also Swithland, which is not separately noticed in Domesday, where the wood was two miles long and half a mile broad; and under Anstey, where the wood was a mile long and half a mile broad.” It should be observed that these parts of the Forest called woods, of so many miles and furlongs, were enclosures for the particular preservation of the beasts of the chase; and it is not hence to be inferred that these were the only woodland parts. Polidore Virgil informs us, that even so late as Henry the Seventh's time, "Tertia propemodum Angliæ Pars pecori aut cervis, damis, capreolis, cuniculisve nutriendis relicta est inculta, quippe passim sunt ejusmodi ferarum vivaria, sen roboraria quæ ligneis roboreis sunt clausa; unde multa venatio, quâ se nobiles cum primis exercent."-These "roboraria" probably meant fenced woods, like those above alluded to. Leland states that, in his time (the middle of the sixteenth century), this Forest “hadde plentye of woode." Dr. Corbett, Bishop of Oxford, who wrote in the seventeenth century (about 1620), mentions in his Iter Septentrionale, that he and his companions were lost in the mazes of Charley Forest, on their route to Bosworth Field. Nichols believes that, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, great quantities of timber were certainly growing: citing in proof of it the prevailing tradition, and the concurrent testimony of aged people. A still stronger proof of the abundance of timber on Charnwood, in the 17th century, may be found in an original document at Beaumanor (1673), which states that "William Heyrick, Esq., the elder, and William Heyrick, Esq., the younger, sold to Humphrey Jennens, Esq. (afterwards owner of Gopsall), 6090 oak and ash trees, within Beaumanor liberty, on the Forest of Charnwood, from Loughborough Lane, near the Mile-cross, to the north-east corner of Charley Lane, and on by Oldfield House, and Oldfield Wood Corner, for the sum of £1,178." The elder trees, crab trees, and hollies, with the alder trees growing along the Carr Brook, were to be left standing, and twelve years allowed for clearance. The acorn harvest and pannage for hogs, of which we find frequent mention in the old conveyances of property bordering on the Forest, are proofs that Charnwood was not only well wooded, but that it abounded in oaks. |