The total acreage of these enclosures was 3,220 acres 6 poles, and their position is shown pretty accurately by Mr. Taylor in his map of the county. Messrs. Driver’s report also informs us that there were now 589 houses, 1,798 pieces of land encroached from the open Forest, comprising 1,385 acres 3 roods 21 poles, thus distributed in the six “walks:”—
Upwards of seventeen different Reports on the condition of “the Forest and Land Revenues of the Crown” were made to Parliament by the Commission of 1788, a fact which will partly explain the delay which took place in carrying out the plans recommended in the Commissioners’ Third Report with reference to the Forest of Dean. The chief improvements effected were in the roads, under an Act passed in the year 1795, for mending, widening, and altering the existing roads, and making new ones through the Forest to places adjoining, in the parishes of Newland, Lydney, and Awre. Mr. John Fordyce, now the Surveyor-General, alluding to the subject in his Report, dated 1797, says, that an arrangement had been made with the principal inhabitants in the neighbourhood, whereby the cost of keeping up the roads was to be met by means of turnpikes, the Crown constructing them in the first instance.
The year 1795 is associated with the disturbances commonly called, even now, for they are not forgotten, “the Bread Riots.” They arose from the circumstance of the foresters being mainly dependent upon the adjacent farms for their corn, but which was now, owing to war, largely bought up by the Government, mostly at Gloucester and Bristol, for the supply of the army and
navy. Hence the inhabitants of the Forest district were left destitute of those supplies which the miners and colliers of the Forest considered they were entitled to, in return for the fuel which they furnished to the farmers.
The following extracts from the contemporary numbers of ‘The Gloucester Journal’ minutely relate the acts of violence which ensued:—
“On Saturday morning, 30th October, 1795, as Mr. King’s waggon, of Bollitree, was bringing a load of barley to the Gloucester Market, it was beset by a number of colliers from the Forest of Dean near the Lea Line, who inquired what the bags contained, and when told that it was barley, they cut the bags to examine; whilst this was passing, a waggon, loaded with wheat, came up the hill belonging to Mr. Dobson, of Harthill, in the parish of Weston, which was taken to in the same manner, and both waggons with the grain were taken off to a place in the Forest of Dean, called Drybrook, where the people divided the corn, and sent back the waggons and horses to the owners.” The next Saturday “a party of foresters, chiefly from the neighbourhood of Lidbrook, stopped a waggon belonging to Mr. Prince, of Longhope, loaded with ninety-two bushels of wheat, and lodged it in Ross Market-house, professedly with the intention of selling it out on Monday morning at eight shillings per bushel. A magistrate, however, reached Ross early on Monday, and, accompanied by ten of the Essex Light Dragoons, saw the grain reloaded into Mr. Prince’s waggon, and sent it off under their escort. In about an hour upwards of sixty foresters collected together, and set off in pursuit of the waggon. The magistrate followed on horseback, and at the Lea he came up with the waggon, which he sent on, and ordered the cavalry to stop till the approach of the mob. They soon made their appearance, and being at first somewhat refractory, the ringleader was taken into custody; when, after the most persuasive remonstrances of this very active magistrate, and the patient forbearance of the soldiery, they were at last prevailed upon to give up the desperate idea of rescuing the grain, and returned peaceably to Ross.”
A reputed highwayman, and noted deerstealer, named William Stallard, living on the Upper Purlieu, above the Hawthorns, is stated to have been the instigator of these outrages, and others of a similar kind on Mr. Prince’s flour-mill at Longhope. His lawless career, however, brought him to the gallows at Gloucester for horse-stealing, at the age of forty, on the 16th August, 1800, as appears by the records of that gaol. The decline of the market in Mitcheldean is said to date from the above disturbances, which naturally deterred the neighbouring farmers from sending their grain thither for sale. [85]
Nor were the bread riots confined to the northern side of the Forest, as upon “the evening of the same day, November 9th, many persons assembled at Hanstell, in the parish of Awre, in this county, where a vessel belonging to Eversham, and bound to Bristol with a cargo of pease, oil, flour, leather, and wheat, was waiting for the tide. About twenty men boarded her, examined the lading, and, upon discovering the flour, gave loud huzzas, when the bank was instantly covered with their comrades, who had many horses in waiting, with which they proceeded to carry off the flour, though the trowmen (unable to defend the vessel, and menaced with instant destruction) had offered to sell it to them at a reasonable price. About 7 o’clock one of the trowmen contrived to slip ashore, ran to Newnham, and sent off an express to Gloucester for immediate military aid; but fortunately that assistance was nearer at hand. In consequence of some apprehension of a disturbance
at Mitcheldean, an officer, with a serjeant and ten file of the Essex Fencibles Cavalry, had marched into the place early in the morning, and upon the arrival of the express from Newnham instantly set forth for the scene of depredation, under the command of Lieutenant Wood, and headed by Mr. Pyrke, a magistrate of Little Dean. The freebooters fled in every direction, but five men, named Thomas Yemm, Thomas Rosser, Richard Brain, George Marfell, and John Meek, being the most active ringleaders, were apprehended, some in the act of conveying away the flour upon packhorses, some had sacks of it upon their shoulders, some were just landed from the vessel; and many were busied on the bank, which was strewed with flour, dividing the sacks into smaller quantities to render it more portable, for even women and children were of the number.” The five men already named were fully committed on the following Tuesday to Gloucester Castle, there to be tried at the Spring Assizes, being guarded thither by one hundred of the Surrey Fencibles, who had arrived in Newnham at 3 o’clock previously. Shortly afterwards, the serjeant of the military, called out on this occasion, was desperately bruised by a stone thrown at him by some desperadoes as he was riding near Mitcheldean, and, on a subsequent Thursday, some villains fired a piece loaded with slugs into the bed-chamber of Mr. Pyrke. At the ensuing Assizes, Thomas Yemm and Thomas Rosser were left for execution, which, although, from the excellent character they previously bore, some gentlemen of the Forest, and of the Grand Jury, interceded with his Majesty on their behalf, they underwent on the 11th April, 1797, acknowledging the justice of their sentence. The extraordinary scarcity, and consequent high price of provisions about this time, were so acutely felt in this neighbourhood, that the Crown distributed £1,000 worth of grain amongst the distressed Foresters.