In the Commissioners’ Report of 1788 it is said that about this time (1712) the Forest was probably in its best state, although its courts had not been so regularly held since the Revolution as before, yet that the greatest attention had been given to it by the different authorities under the Crown. And as the commissioners deplore the unfavourable change which had subsequently taken place, we may contrast the state into which the Forest had then fallen, with its present condition, so much more hopeful and lucrative than it had been at that the brightest period of its past history. There are no public documents relating to this Forest to be met with for many years from this time; indeed it is hardly ever mentioned in the book of the Surveyor-General of the Crown lands, which only contained warrants for felling timber for the navy or for sale. The produce was for the most part directed to be applied to the repairing of lodges, roads, or fences, or the payment of salaries to officers, or fee-gifts from the Crown. The proceedings of the Court of the Miners, on the contrary, remain recorded, and serve to fill up the interval. They show that one was held at the Speech-house on the 7th of January, 1717, before Richard Machen and William James, Esqrs., deputies.
By it a 6d. levy was made on every miner, and on every working horse, towards meeting any law expenses which the Society of Miners might incur in defending their rights; and should more money be required, authorizing a jury of only twelve miners, with the consent of the two deputy-constables, to order the paying of the same. It further imposed a fine of upwards of £30 on any miner who should sue another respecting any matter relating to the mine in any other court. It also constituted the Honourable Matthew Ducie Morton, Thomas Gage, John Wyndham, Richard Machen, William James, and Christopher Bond, Esqrs., free miners, “out of the due and great respect, honour, and esteem borne towards them.” We need not call in question the truthfulness of such protestations; but doubtless, had these worthy miners perceived the inconsistency of such admissions, they would not have so readily dispensed with the ancient regulation which restricted the fellowship of the mine to those who had worked therein. They were well intended at the time, but long afterwards weakened in a legal point of view the free miners’ rights. This “Order” exhibits only eleven original signatures, the thirty-seven other jurymen making their marks.
Only two years intervened between the holding of the Court just mentioned, and the one which followed it, held at the Speech House, on 10th November, 1719, before Richard Machen and William James, Esqrs., Deputies.
On this occasion certain previous orders were cancelled, and in their stead it was determined that no one living out of the Hundred of St. Briavel’s should convey any coal out of the Forest unless he belonged to the Forest division of the county, and carried for his own private use. A penalty of £5 was imposed upon any person under twenty-one years of age carrying ore or coal. All traffic in coal, either up or down the Wye, was to stop at Welch Bicknor, between which and Monmouth Bridge no coal was to be pitched. At Monmouth, fire-coal was to be sold at 9s. the dozen bushels; smith’s-coal at 8s.; and lime-coal at 5s. 6d. Above Lydbrook, on the Wye, fire-coal was to be sold at 8s. a ton, or the dozen barrels; smith’s-coal at 6s.; and lime-coal at 3s. One free miner was not to sell any fire-coal to another under 5s. per ton of 21 cwt. Roynon Jones and Edmund Probyn, Esqrs., were made free miners. Lastly, any former orders in private hands, together with all writings relating to the Free-miners’ Court, were to be delivered to William James, Esq., to be kept in the said miners’ chest, at the Speech-house. Perhaps this direction was, with few exceptions, complied with, not, it would seem, in every case, as several of those alluded to in the existing orders of the forty-eight cannot be found. Nineteen signatures made by the parties themselves occur at the end of this Order; the rest are only marks.
Nine years passed away before another full Mine Law Court is recorded. This was on the 12th November, 1728, by adjournment, at the Speech House, before Maynard Colchester, Esq., and William James, Gent.
The following gentlemen were made free miners:—Thomas Wyndham, of Clearwell; Maynard Colchester, of Westbury; William Hall Gage, son and heir to Lord Viscount Gage; William Jones, of Nass, Esqrs.; William Jones, of Soylewell, Gent.; Robert James, of the same place, Gent.; Thomas Wyndham the younger, of Clearwell, Gent.; Thomas Pyrke the younger, of Little Dean, Gent.; and William Lane, Deputy Clerk. A forfeit of £10 was laid upon any miner who had received a “forbidment” from another, if he persisted in carrying on his work in that place. The distance of 300 yards, which, by a former order, made in 1692, protected every pit from interruption, was now enlarged to 500 yards in all levels in all parts of the mines called “beneath the wood,” under the same penalty; and further, the giving away of coals was forbidden under a fine of £5. Twenty-two original signatures appear at the foot of this Order; the other names are merely marked.
The extension of the Forest coal-works, in depth and underground operations, as indicated by the enlargement of the protective distance, effected a corresponding change in the kind of timber required for propping the mine. That is, as the pressure from above increased, owing to the workings being carried deeper, stronger stays and supports were necessary than cordwood or saplings supplied. Nothing less than the stems and main limbs of timber trees would suffice. How the colliers obtained these requisites, the particulars given in the following complaint, made in 1735 by the Surveyor-General, show:—“A practice has prevailed among the colliers of boring large holes in trees that they may become dotard and decayed, and, as such, may be delivered to them gratis for the use of their collieries.” The only notice, it cannot be called a remedy, which this evil obtained, was that, for the future, directions were given that “such bored trees as appeared to be dead and spoiled shall be felled, taking care that none be cut down that may be of use to the navy.”
It is, however, further stated, that the colliers frequently obtained from the keepers the best trees in the Forest, although their claims merely extended to pit-timber. The existence of so serious an evil proves that many things were going wrong, and we are prepared for the representations made the next year (1736) to the Treasury by Christopher Bond, Esq., Conservator and Supervisor of the Forest. He reported that “after the Act of the 20th Charles II., 11,000 acres had been enclosed; that the officers were duly elected, Forest courts held, and offenders prosecuted and punished, to the successful rearing of a fine crop of wood; but that
within the last 30 years these elections had been neglected, the Courts discontinued, and offenders left unpunished; the Officers of Inheritance had grown remiss and negligent, so that some enclosures, and those of only a few acres of the 11,000, were kept up, and these not carefully repaired; a great number of cottages were erected upon the borders of the Forest, the inhabitants whereof lived by rapine and theft; that there were besides many other offences committed, such as intercommuning of foreigners, surcharges of commoners, trespasses in the fence month and winter haining, and in the enclosures; keeping hogs, sheep, goats, and geese, being uncommonable animals, in the Forest; cutting and burning the nether vert, furze, and fern; gathering and taking away the crabs, acorns, and mast; and other purprestures and offences; carrying away such timber trees as were covertly cut down in the night time; by which practices several hundred fine oaks were yearly destroyed, and the growth of others prevented; and that it was feared that some of the inferior officers of the Forest, finding offenders to go on with impunity, were not only grown negligent, but also connived at, if not partook in, the spoil daily committed.”
To remedy this bad state of things, Mr. Bond proposed that a new law should be passed, explanatory of the Act of 1668, by enforcing the Forest officers to do their duty, and by superseding the odious, because unlimited and arbitrary, proceedings of the former Chief Justices in Eyre by a jury, and convictions before the verderers at their Swainmote Court, with a power lodged in those officers to fine, under a certain sum, all offenders. The Surveyor-General of the Crown Woods had the above proposal submitted to his consideration, and was directed to attend the Attorney and Solicitor-General, Sir John Willis and Sir Dudley Ryder, to take their opinion thereon, which was, that “the offences were chiefly owing to the neglect of putting the Stat. 20th Charles II. in execution; and they recommended, therefore, that the several vacant offices of the Forest