That there were, however, poachers upon the king’s preserves appears from a criminal prosecution recorded on the Forest Roll of 1209, to the effect that four of the county sergeants found venison in the house of Hugh le Scot, who took asylum in a church, and, refusing to quit, “there lived a month,” but afterwards “escaped in woman’s clothes.”
Certain sales of forest land made by Henry II. near the Wrekin, and entered on the Forest Roll of 1180, together with the assessments and perambulations of later periods, afford some idea of the extent of this forest, which, from the Severn and the limits of Shrewsbury, swept round by Tibberton and Chetwynd to the east, and included Lilleshall, St. George’s, Dawley, Shifnal, Kemberton, and Madeley on the south. From the “Survey of Shropshire Forests” in 1235, it appears that the following woods were subject to its jurisdiction: Leegomery, Wrockwardine Wood, Eyton-on-the-Weald Moors, Lilleshall, Sheriffhales, the Lizard, Stirchley, and Great Dawley. A later perambulation fixed the bounds of the royal preserve, or Haye of Wellington, in which two burnings of lime for the use of the crown are recorded, as well as the fact that three hundred oak-trees were consumed in the operation.
Hugh Forester, and Robert the Forester, are spoken of as tenants of the crown in connection with this Haye; and it is an interesting coincidence that the land originally granted by one of the Norman earls, or by King Henry I., for the custody of this Haye, which included what is now called Hay Gate, is still in possession of the present noble owner of Willey. It seems singular, however, that in the “Arundel Rolls” of 1255, it should be described as a pourpresture, for which eighteen pence per acre was paid to the king, as being held by the said Robert Forester towards the custody of the Wellington Haia.
Among the perquisites which the said Robert Forester was allowed, as Keeper of the Haye, all dead wood and windfalls are mentioned, unless more than five oak-trees were blown down at a time, in which case they went to the king. The Haye is spoken of here as an “imparkment,” which agrees with the descriptions of Chaucer and other old writers, who speak of a Haia as a place paled in, or enclosed, into which deer or other game were driven, as they now drive deer in North America, or elephants in India, and of grants of land made to those whose especial duty it was to drive the deer with their troop of followers from all parts of a wide circle into such enclosure for slaughter. The following description of deer-hunting in the seventeenth century by Taylor, the Water Poet, as he is called, will enable us to understand the plan pursued by the Norman sportsmen:—
“Five or six hundred men do rise early in the morning, and they do disperse themselves divers ways; and seven, eight, or ten miles’ compass, they do bring or chase in the deer in many herds (two, three, or four hundred in a herd) to such a place as the noblemen shall appoint them; then, when the day is come, the lords and gentlemen of their companies do ride or go to the said places, sometimes wandering up to the middle through bourns, and rivers; and then, they being come to the place, do lie down on the ground till those foresaid scouts, which are called the Tinkheldt, do bring down the deer. Then, after we had stayed three hours or there abouts, we might perceive the deer appear on the hills round about us (their heads making a show like a wood), which being followed close by the Tinkheldt, are chased down into the valley where we lay; then all the valley on each side being waylaid with a hundred couple of strong Irish greyhounds, they are let loose as occasion serves upon the herd of deer, that with dogs, guns, arrows, dirks, and daggers, in the space of two hours fourscore fat deer were slain.”
Hunting matches were sometimes made in these forests, and one, embittered by some family feud respecting a fishery, terminated in the death of a bold and ancient knight, an event recorded upon a stone covering his remains in the quaint and truly ancient church at Atcham.
“The bugle sounds, ’tis Berwick’s lord
O’er Wrekin drives the deer;
That hunting match—that fatal feud—
Drew many a widow’s tear.“With deep-mouthed talbe to rouse the game
His generous bosom warms,
Till furious foemen check the chase
And dare the din of arms.“Then fell the high-born Malveysin,
His limbs besmeared with gore;
No more his trusty bow shall twang,
His bugle blow no more.“Whilst Ridware mourns her last brave son
In arms untimely slain,
With kindred grief she here records
The last of Berwick’s train.”
