Two of the stones which mark the boundary of the Forest of Dean at The Lea. Read on to discover their story.

 

‘He established many deer preserves and set up many laws concerning them such that whoever killed a hart or a hind should be blinded. He forbade hunting of harts and also of boars. He loved the wild deer as if he were their father.’

 

Lines translated from the Old English poem ‘The Rime of King William’ published in 1087

 

From the Domesday Book, we learn that Dean was a royal estate before the Norman Conquest. William the Conqueror brought Forest Law to England and, sometime before 1086, made Dean a Royal Forest. 

 

The Forest of Dean was well wooded, but a Forest was not necessarily a place of trees. It was a place where the vegetation (verte) and the deer and wild boar (venison), which relied on it for food and shelter, were protected. 

 

The supposed reason for Forests was the Norman Kings’ love of hunting, but there were also others: Forests were a store of meat on the hoof, which could be drawn upon to feed the royal household; they concentrated power and patronage in the hands of the king; and they were an important source of royal income, from fees for permitting activities that would otherwise be unlawful, and fines for breaches of Forest Law. 

 

What might this have to do with readers of The Chimes?

 

The first Royal Forests were places where few people lived. The extent of the Forest of Dean in 1086 is uncertain, but we know that few settlements were within it. This was to change. When the Crown was strong, new Forests were created and existing ones enlarged until about one third of England, much of it farmland, was designated Forest. 

 

Sometime between Domesday and the death of King John in 1216, the Forest of Dean expanded in almost all directions. The northern boundary now ran from Ross to Bollitree, Bromsash, a wayside cross near Linton, Gorsley, Newent and down the valley of the river Leadon to Gloucester. Most of where we now live was subject to Forest Law. Many of the ordinary tasks necessary to grow crops and raise livestock were difficult or impossible to carry out without breaking that law. For the Crown, this meant more income from fees and fines. 

 

In 1215, the barons forced King John to sign Magna Carta. When he died the following year, Henry III came to the throne at the age of nine. In 1217, he was forced to issue the Charter of the Forest. This eased the most oppressive restrictions imposed by the Forest Law and reduced the area designated Forest. Any relief was short-lived. On reaching the age of majority, the king revoked the Charter, in 1297 Edward I, desperately short of money, was forced by his nobles to confirm both Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest. There followed thirty years of confusion and dispute, until, in 1327, by Act of Parliament, the ancient, reduced, Forest boundaries were confirmed. Little or nothing of Herefordshire now lay within the Forest of Dean.

 

And that is how things remained, until Charles I took it into his head to revive medieval Forest Law. In July 1634, an Eyre, the highest Forest Law court, was held, at which the King’s Counsel persuaded, cajoled and intimidated the jury and judges into agreeing that the act of 1327 had been misapplied to the Forest of Dean. Henceforth, the enlarged boundaries were, once again, to be enforced. Our predecessors’ lands were back in the Forest. As a concession, the King’s Counsel graciously agreed that offences committed in the intervening three hundred years would not be enquired into. 

 

The reimposition of Forest Law did not endear Charles to his subjects. In 1640, he abandoned the policy and, in the following year, an Act of Parliament decreed that the boundaries of Royal Forests should be as they were ‘commonly known, reputed and taken to be, in the 20th year of James I’, that is 1623. In Dean's case, these were the ancient, reduced boundaries. Once again, the residents of surrounding lands, including The Lea, were free from the burdens of Forest Law.

            -David Mullin