it appears that the parishes or tithings of Westbury, Little Dean, Awre, Ruerdean, Bicknor, Lea hamlet, Breem, Clearwell, Newland, Lydney, St. Briavel’s, Newnham, Woolaston, and Purton, claimed the right of Common of Pasture.
In the same month “the Free Miners of the Forest” presented to the Commissioners an able memorial of their rights, in reply to that preferred the year before by persons not free miners, but who were proprietors and occupiers of coal and iron mines in the Forest; its object being to prove that “foreigners possessing and working mines therein was in direct violation of the rights and privileges of the free miners, contrary to their customs and franchises, and are acts of injustice and usurpation.” They affirmed that the present usage of foreigners possessing mines was not of long standing,—that it dated from the discontinuance of the Mine Law Court in 1777, by which all such intrusions were strictly checked and prevented; that this Court had been in full operation upwards of 500 years, as they verily believed, and so continued until the last 60 years, meeting periodically under the presidency of the Constable appointed by the King, and attended by his deputies and by the King’s Gaveller; and that, if this Court were re-established, and their rights and privileges restored to them, there would be no difficulty in finding capital for the proper working of the mines. The memorial was signed by 1,036 persons, professedly free miners. But, as to this being the fact, a further memorial was presented to the Commissioners on the 23rd of December, urging “that no person should be considered a free miner whose birth from parents free miners cannot be proved, in addition to their having been born in the Forest, and worked in the mines a year and a day.” According to such rule, the original number of 1,036 would be reduced to 798. On the 24th of December this year (1834) another memorial, coming from free miners in the occupation of stone-quarries within the Forest, was laid before the Commissioners, pleading in few words for similar rights
and customs in respect of stone-quarries as were claimed in regard of mines. The names of thirteen quarrymen were attached thereto.
Upon the 9th and three following days of June in the ensuing year (1835) the Dean Forest Commissioners, at meetings held in London, received letters from the Bishop of the diocese, from the clergymen of the Forest, and of the Lea and Flaxley parishes, recommending the parochializing the Forest for ecclesiastical purposes, either by means of curates with small chapels, or by dividing the whole into a certain number of distinct districts severally provided with a church and an incumbent. The Commissioners reported unanimously in favour of making the Forest parochial; and for all spiritual purposes they recommended an assignment of districts to each of the churches already built, as also the erection of a church and parsonage at Cinderford, with a stipend of £150 annexed, to which amount the salaries of the three existing ministers should also be raised. They further recommended the enlargement of the Lydbrook school-room into a chapel, with £80 stipend to the clergyman serving it; and they likewise advised forming Viney Hill, having a population of nearly 800, into a district, or annexing it to Blakeney, the church there, and minister’s salary, being enlarged accordingly. They also suggested that the 150 persons residing on Pope’s Hill should be united to Flaxley, with £20 added to the clergyman’s stipend; and that the Lea Bailey, with its 100 inhabitants, should be annexed in the same manner, and under the same conditions, to the Lea parish.
In the second place, as to the relief of the poor inhabitants of the Forest, the Commissioners were of opinion that it would be impossible to raise a fund for this purpose by means of rates on property, as so much was in the actual occupation of the Crown, or connected with mining, or the holders being too poor to bear the burthen. They advised, therefore, that about 1,600 acres of the Forest land should be enclosed and let out for the purpose of furnishing such a provision, to be
dispensed at the discretion of a Board composed of the constable of St. Briavel’s Castle, the verderers, clergymen, and deputy-surveyor, and the magistrates acting for the Forest division, and six inhabitants as coadjutors. [122]
On the 25th of August the Dean Forest Commissioners presented their fourth and fifth Reports. In the former, which gives a minute summary of the rights and privileges claimed by the free miners (derived chiefly from the evidence taken in 1832), the origin of them is stated to be involved in obscurity, although no doubt iron was manufactured in the neighbourhood as early as the time of the Romans, and coal was obtained in the reign of Edward III. Probably before, and certainly soon after, the Norman Conquest, the soil was vested in the Crown, and all the rights of a royal forest were in force. The persons by whom the mines were then worked could not have been, in the first instance, free tenants of the Crown. It is more likely that they were in a state of servitude, and subject, in that character, to perform the labour required of them. The name of “Free Miners,” by which they are and have been for centuries known, seems to refer to some right or privilege distinct from their original condition; and it does not appear unreasonable to suppose that certain persons at some distant period, either by having worked for a year and a day, or by reason of some now unknown circumstance connected with the origin of the privilege, were considered as emancipated, and thereupon became entitled or were allowed to work the mines upon their own adventure, concurrently with or subject to the right of the Crown to a certain portion of the product.
Noticing in succession many of the historical incidents attaching to the free miners of the Forest, the Report states that the franchise of the mine was unquestionably perpetuated by birth from a free father in the hundred of St. Briavel’s, and afterwards working a year and a day in one of the mines and abiding within the hundred. Doubt is, however, thrown upon the necessity of birth from a free miner, the more so as the son of a foreigner could obtain his freedom after working out an apprenticeship of seven years with a free miner; and it would be difficult, if not impossible, at the present time, to confine the title to anything beyond birth and service, to which particular class of individuals the Court of Mine Law confined all mining operations.
Entering in the next place into a consideration of the actual claims of the free miners, the Commissioners declare their opinion as to how their claims are to be settled, suggesting at once the question “whether they can be now maintained with advantage to the miners themselves, or to the community,” connected as they are with a most defective system of working, productive of incessant disputes and expensive litigation, and occasioning constant disputes and never-ending jealousy; and they thus conclude—“Taking all the circumstances of the case into consideration, we are of opinion that the monopoly and customary workings are practically at an end, and that, if individual claims were bought up, the whole coal-field might then be let by the Crown as between landlord and tenant, defining the limits and regulating the working.”
The fifth and final Report of the Dean Forest Commissioners bore the same date as the preceding. It contains the evidence produced before them as to “certain claims of common of pasture” made by the inhabitants of the following parishes bounding the Forest, and paying a small sum annually, called “herbage money,” to the lessee of the Crown of the manor and hundred of St. Briavel’s, and the manor of Newland, as annexed:—