Afforestation of Shirlot—Extent—Places Disafforested—Hayes—Foresters—Hunting Lodges—Sporting Priors—Old Tenures—Encroachments upon Woods by Iron-making Operations—Animals that have Disappeared—Reaction due to a Love of Sport—What the Country would have lost—“The Merrie Greenwood”—Remarkable old Forest Trees, &c.
“Where with puffed cheek the belted hunter blows
His wreathed bugle horn.”
Mr. Eyton thinks the afforestation of Shirlot was probably suggested by its proximity to the Morville and Chetton manors, where Saxon kings and Mercian earls had their respective demesnes, and that Henry I. and his successors, in visiting the Castle of Bridgnorth, or as guests of the Prior of Wenlock, had obvious reasons for perpetuating there the exclusive rights of a Royal chace. Although Shirlot Forest was separated from that of Morfe by the Severn, its jurisdiction extended across the river to Apley, and embraced places lying along the right bank of the river, in the direction of Cressage. Bridgnorth with its surroundings was not taken out of its jurisdiction or thrown open by perambulation till 1301, when it was disafforested, together with Eardington, Much Wenlock, Broseley, and other places. The extent and ancient jurisdiction of this forest may be estimated by the number of places taken from it at this date, as Benthall, Buildwas, Barrow, Belswardine, Shineton, Posenall, Walton, Willey, Atterley, the Dean, the Bold, Linley, Caughley, Little Caughley, Rowton, Sweyney, Appeleye (the only vill eastward of Severn), Colemore, Stanley, Rucroft, Medewegrene, Cantreyne, Simon de Severn’s messuage (now Severn Hall), Northleye, Astley Abbot’s Manor, La Dunfowe (Dunwall), La Rode (now Rhodes), Kinsedeleye (now Kinslow), Tasley, Crofte, Haleygton (Horton, near Morville), Aldenham, the Bosc of the Earl of Arundel within the bounds of the forest of Schyrlet, which is called Wiles Wode (i.e. Earl’s Wood), Aston Aer, Momerfield (Morville), Lee, Underdone, Walton (all three near Morville), Upton (now Upton Cresset), Meadowley, Stapeley, Criddon, Midteleton (Middleton Scriven), the Bosc of the Prior of Wenlock, called Lythewode, half the vill of Neuton (Newton near Bold), Faintree, Chetton, Walkes Batch (Wallsbatch, near Chetton), Hollycott, Hapesford (now Harpswood), Westwood (near Harpswood), Oldbury, a messuage at the More (the Moor Ridding), a messuage at La Cnolle (now Knowle Sands), and the Bosc which is called Ongeres.
The ancient extent of the forest must have been about twelve miles by five. The names of the places mentioned to which the limits of the chace are traced are so different in many instances from the present that it may be of interest to give a few of them. From Yapenacres Merwey the boundary was to go up to the Raveneshok (Ravens’ Oak), thence straight to the Brenallegrene, near the Coleherth (Coal Hearth) going up by the Fendeshok (Friends’ Oak) to the Dernewhite-ford. Thence upwards to the Nethercoumbesheved; and so straight through the Middlecoumbesheved, and then down to Caldewall. Then down through the Lynde to the Mer Elyn. Thence down to Dubledaneslegh, and then up by a certain watercourse to the Pirle; and so up to Wichardesok; and so to the Pundefold; and so down by the Shepewey to the Holeweeuen, and then up by a certain fence to Adame’s Hale (Adam’s Hall), and thus by the assarts which John de Haldenham (Aldenham) holds at a rent of the king to the corner of Mokeleyes Rowe (Muckley Row); and thence down to Yapenacres Merwey, where the first land-mark of the Haye begins. There was also, it was said, a certain bosc which the King still held in the same forest, called Benthlegh Haye (Bentley Haye).
In addition to this Haye there was the Haye of Shirlot, opposite to which a portion of the forest in the fifth of Henry III.’s reign was ordered to be assarted, which consisted in grubbing up the roots so as to render the ground fit for tillage.
In connection with these Hayes, generally a staff of foresters, verderers, rangers, stewards, and regarders was kept up; and forest courts were also held at stated times (in the forest of the Clee every six weeks), at which questions and privileges connected with the forest were considered. Philip de Baggesour, Forester of the Fee in the king’s free Haye of Schyrlet in 1255, in the Inquisition of Hundreds, is said to have under him “two foresters, who give him 20s. per annum for holding their office, and to make a levy on oats in Lent, and on wheat in autumn.” “The aforesaid Philip,” it is said, “hath now in the said Haye of Windfalls as much as seven trees, and likewise all trees which are wind-fallen, the jurors know not by what warrant except by ancient tenure.” These privileged officers had good pickings, evidently by means of their various time-sanctioned customs, and jolly lives no doubt they led.
In the forty-second of Henry III. Hammond le Strange was steward of this forest, and in the second of Edward I. the king’s forester is said to have given the sheriff of the county notice that he was to convey all the venison killed in the forests of Salop, and deliver it at Westminster to the king’s larder, for the use of the king’s palace. According to the same record, the profits that were made of the oaks that were fallen were to be applied to the building of a vessel for the king. In the nineteenth of Richard II., Richard Chelmswick was appointed forester for life; and in the twenty-sixth of Henry III. the stewardship both of the forests of Morfe and of Shirlot was granted to John Hampton and his heirs.
Some of the chief foresters also held Willey, and probably resided there; at any rate it is not improbable that a building which bears marks of extreme antiquity, between Barrow and Broseley, called the Lodge Farm, was once the hunting lodge. It has underneath strongly arched and extensive cellaring, which seems to be older than portions of the superstructure, and which may have held the essentials for feasts, for which sportsmen of all times have been famous. Near the lodge, too, is the Dear-Loape, or Deer Leap, a little valley through which once evidently ran a considerable stream, and near which the soil is still black, wet, and boggy. A deer leap, dear loape, or saltory, was a pitfall—a contrivance common during the forest periods, generally at the edge of the chace, for taking deer, and often granted by charter as a privilege—as that, for instance, on the edge of Cank, or Cannock Chace. Sometimes these pitfalls, dug for the purpose of taking game, were used by poachers, who drove the deer into them. It is, therefore, easy to understand why the forest lodge should be near, as a protection. It was usually one of the articles of inquiry at the Swainmote Court whether “any man have any great close within three miles of the forest that have any saltories, or great gaps called deer loapes, to receive deer into them when they be in chasing, and when they are in them they cannot get out again.”
Among sportsmen of these forest periods we must not omit to notice the Priors of the ancient Abbey of Wenlock. The heads of such wealthy establishments by no means confined themselves within the limits of the chapter-house. They were no mere cloistered monks, devoted to book and candle, but jolly livers, gaily dressed, and waited upon by well-appointed servants; like the Abbot of Buildwas, who had for his vassal the Lord of Buildwas Parva, who held land under him on condition that he and his wife should place the first dish on the abbot’s table on Christmas Day, and ride with him any whither within the four seas at the abbot’s charge. They had huntsmen and hounds, and one can imagine their sporting visitation rounds among their churches, the chanting of priests, the deep-mouthed baying of dogs, early matins, and the huntsman’s bugle horn harmoniously blending in the neighbourhood of the forest. Hugh Montgomery in his day gave to the abbey a tithe of the venison which he took in its woods, and in 1190 we find the Prior of Wenlock giving twenty merks to the king that he may “have the Wood of Shirlott to himself, exempt from view of foresters, and taken out of the Regard.” As we have already shown, the priors had a park at Madeley, they had one at Oxenbold, and they also had privileges over woods adjoining the forest of the Clees, where the Cliffords exercised rights ordinarily belonging to royal proprietors, and where their foresters carried things with such a high hand, and so frequently got into trouble with those of the priors, that the latter were glad to accept an arrangement, come to after much litigation in 1232, by which they were to have a tenth beast only of those taken in their own woods at Stoke and Ditton, and of those started in their demesne boscs, and taken elsewhere. These boscs appear to have been woodland patches connecting the long line of forest stretching along the flanks of the Clee Hills with that on the high ground of Shirlot and, as in the case of others even much further removed, their ownership was exceedingly limited. One of the complaints against Clifford’s foresters was, that they would not suffer the priors’ men to keep at Ditton Priors and Stoke St. Milburgh any dogs not expedited, or mutilated in their feet, nor pasture for their goats.
Chapter House of Wenlock Priory
Imbert, one of these priors, was chosen as one of the Commissioners for concluding a truce with David ap Llewellyn in July, 1244. He was subsequently heavily fined for trespasses for assarting, or grubbing up the roots of trees, in forest lands at Willey, Broseley, Coalbrookdale, Madeley, and other places, the charge for trespass amounting to the large sum of £126 13s. 4d.
A survey of the Haye of Shirlot, made by four knights of the county, pursuant to a royal writ in October 21, 1235, sets forth “its custody good as regards oak trees and underwood, except that great deliveries have been made by order of the king to the Abbeys of Salop and Bildewas, to the Priory of Wenlock, and to the Castle of Brug, for the repairs of buildings, &c.”
Some curious tenures existed within the jurisdiction of this forest, one of which it may be worth while deviating from our present purpose to notice, as it affords an insight into the early iron manufacturing operations which, at a later period, led to the destruction of forest trees, but, at the same time, to the development of the mineral wealth of the district within and bordering upon the forest. Of its origin nothing is known; but it is supposed to have arisen out of some kingly peril or other forest incident connected with the chase. It consisted in this, that the tenant of the king at the More held his land upon the condition that he appeared yearly in the Exchequer with a hazel rod of a year’s growth and a cubit’s length, and two knives. The treasurer and barons being present, the tenant was to attempt to sever the rod with one of the knives, so that it bent or broke. The other knife was to do the same work at one stroke, and to be given up to the king’s chamberlain for royal use. [41]
That iron was manufactured at a very early period in the heart of the forests of Shirlot and the Clees, is shown by Leland, who informs us that in his day there were blow-shops upon the Brown Clee Hills in Shropshire, where iron ores were exposed upon the hill sides, and where, from the fact that wood was required for smelting, it is only reasonable to look for them. Historical records and monastic writings, as well as old tenures, traditions, and heaps of slag, tell us that iron had been manufactured in the midst of these woods from very remote periods. As far back as 1250, a notice occurs of a right of road granted by Philip de Benthall, Lord of Benthall, to the monks of Buildwas, over all his estate, for the carriage of stone, coal, and timber; and in an old work in the Deer Leap, very primitive wooden shovels, and wheels flanged and cut out of the solid block, and apparently designed to bear heavy weights, were found a short time since, which are now in possession of Mr. Thursfield, of Barrow, together with an iron axletree and some brass sockets, two of which have on them “P. B.,” being the initials of Philip Benthall, or Philip Burnel, it is supposed, the latter having succeeded the former. At Linley, and the Smithies, traces of old forges occur; so that there is good reason for supposing that knives and other articles of iron may have been manufactured in the district from a very early period. Among the assets, for instance, of the Priory of Wenlock, in the year 1541–2, is a mine of ironstone, at Shirlot, fermed for £2 6s. 1d. per annum; and a forge, described as an Ierne Smythee, or a smith’s place, in Shirlot, rented at £12 8s. Another forge produced £2 13s. 4d. per annum; and the produce of some other mineral, probably coal, was £5 3s. 10d. These large rents for those days show the advance made in turning to account the mineral wealth of the district, and the superior value of mines compared with trees, or mere surface produce.
Wherever powerful streams came down precipitous channels, little forges with clanging hammers were heard reverberating through the woods as early as the reigns of the Tudors. Their sites now are—
“Downy banks damask’d with flowers:”
but they reveal the havoc made of the timber by cutting and burning it for charcoal down to the reign of Elizabeth, when an act was passed to restrict the use for such purposes.
These iron-making and mining operations caused the forest to be intersected by roads and tramways, as old maps and reports of the forest shew us; so that few beasts, except those passing between their more secluded haunts, were to be found there; and, as the stragglers preferred the tender vegetation the garden of the cottager afforded, even these were sometimes noosed, or shot with bows and arrows, which made no noise.
To such an extent had destruction of timber in this and other forests in the country been carried, that it was feared that in the event of a foreign war sufficient timber could not be found for the use of the navy. A reaction, however, set in: wealthy landowners set themselves to work to remedy the evil by planting and preserving trees, especially the oak; and many of the woods and plantations which gladden the eye of the traveller in passing through the country, and which afford good sport to the Wheatland and Albrighton packs, were the result.
To this indigenous and deep-rooted love of sport we are therefore indebted, to a very great extent, for those beautiful woods which adorn the Willey country and many other portions of the kingdom. But for our woods and the “creeping things” they shelter, we should have imperfect conceptions of those earlier phases of the island:—
“When stalked the bison from his shaggy lair,
Thousands of years before the silent air
Was pierced by whizzing shafts of hunters keen.”
The country would have been wanting in subjects such as Creswick, with faithful expressions of foliage and knowledge of the play of light and shade, has depicted. It would have lost the text-work of those characteristics Constable revelled in, and those Harding gave us in his oaks. We should have lost subjects for the poet as well as for the painter; for the ballad literature of the country is redolent of sights and sounds associated therewith. To come down from the earliest times. How the old Druids reverenced them! how the compilers of that surprising survey of the country we find in Domesday noted all details concerning them! what joyous allusions Chaucer, Spenser, and later writers make to them! what peculiar charms the “merry green-wood” and the deep forest glades had for the imagination of the people! Hence the popular sympathy expressed by means of tales and traditions in connection with Sherwood’s sylvan shade, and the many editions of the song of the bold outlaw, and of the adventures contained therein. Even the utilitarian philosopher and the ultra radical, fleeing from the stifling atmosphere of the town, and diving for an hour or so into some paternal wood, is inclined, we fancy, to sponge from his memory the bitter things he has said of the owners and of that aristocratic class who usually value and guard them as they do their picture galleries. Thanks to such as these, there is now scarcely a run in the Willey country but brings the sportsman face to face with vestiges of some sylvan memorial Nature or man has planted along the hill and valley sides, memorials renewed again and again, as winter after winter rends the red leaves from the trees: and the man who has not made a pilgrimage, for sport or otherwise, through these far-reaching sylvan slopes along the valley of the Severn, stretching almost uninterruptedly for seven or eight miles, or through some similar wooded tract, witnessing the sheltered inequalities of the surface, varied by rocky glens and rushy pools—the winter haunt of snipe and woodcock—has missed much that might afford him the highest interest. Here and there, on indurated soils along the valley sides, opportunities occur of studying the manner in which trees of several centuries’ growth send their gnarled and massive roots in between the rocks in search of nourishment, for firmness, or to resist storms that shake branches little inferior to the parent stem. Few places probably have finer old hollies and yew-trees indigenous to the soil, relieving the monotony of the general grey by their sombre green—trees rooted where they grew six or eight centuries since, and carrying back the mind to the time of Harold and the bowmen days of Robin Hood.
Spoonhill, a very well-known covert of the Wheatland Hunt, was a slip of woodland as early as a perambulation in 1356, when it was recorded to lie outside the forest, its boundary on the Shirlot side being marked by a famous oak called Kinsok, “which stood on the king’s highway between Weston and Wenlock.”
The Larden and Lutwyche woods for many years have been famous for foxes. The late M. Benson, Esq., told us that a fox had for several seasons made his home securely in a tree near his house, he having taken care to keep his secret. The woods, too, on the opposite side of the ridge, rarely fail to furnish a fox; and it is difficult to imagine a finer spot than Smallman’s Leap, [49a] or Ipikin’s Rock, on the “Hill Top,” presents for viewing a run over Hughley and Kenley, or between there and Hope Bowdler. Near Lutwyche is a thick entangled wood, called Mog Forest; and in the old door of the Church of Easthope, [49b] near, is a large iron ring, which is conjectured to have been placed there for outlaws of the forest who sought sanctuary or freedom from arrest to take hold of. Now and then, in wandering over the sites of these former forests, we come upon traditions of great trees, sometimes upon an aged tree itself, “bald with antiquity,” telling of parent forest tracts, like the Lady Oak at Cressage, which formerly stood in the public highway, and suffered much from gipsies and other vagabonds lighting fires in its hollow trunk, but which is now propped, cramped, and cared for, with as much concern as the Druids were wont to show to similar trees. A young tree, too, sprung from an acorn from the old one, has grown up within its hollow trunk, and now mingles its foliage with that of the parent.
There are a few fine old trees near Willey, supposed to be fragmentary forest remains. One is a patriarchal-looking ash in the public road at Barrow; another is an oak near the Dean; it is one of which the present noble owner of Willey shows the greatest pride and care. There are also two noble trees at Shipton and Larden; the one at the latter place being a fine beech, the branches of which, when tipped with foliage, have a circumference of 35 yards. A magnificent oak, recently cut down in Corve Dale, contained 300 cubic feet of timber, and was 18 feet in circumference. This, however, was a sapling compared with that king of forest trees which Loudon describes as having been cut down in Willey Park. It spread 114 feet, and had a trunk 9 feet in diameter, exclusive of the bark. It contained 24 cords of yard wood, 11½ cords of four-feet wood, 252 park palings, six feet long, 1 load of cooper’s wood, 16½ tons of timber in all the boughs; 28 tons of timber in the body, and this besides fagots and boughs that had dropped off:—
“What tales, if there be tongues in trees,
Those giant oaks could tell,
Of beings born and buried here;
Tales of the peasant and the peer,
Tales of the bridal and the bier
The welcome and farewell.”
The old oak forests and chestnut groves which supplied the sturdy framework for the half-timbered houses of our ancestors, the rafters for their churches, and the beams for their cathedrals, are gone; and the mischief is, not only that we have lost former forests, but that our present woods every year are growing less, that much of that shrubby foliage which within our own recollection divided the fields, forming little copses in which a Morland would have revelled, have had to give way to agricultural improvements, and the objects of sport they sheltered have disappeared. The badger lingered to the beginning of the present century along the rocks of Benthall and Apley; and the otter, which still haunts portions of the Severn and its more secluded tributaries, and occasionally affords sport in some parts of the country higher up, was far from being rare. On the left bank of the Severn are the “Brock-holes,” or badger-holes, whilst near to it are the “Fox-holes,” where tradition alleges foxes a generation or two ago to have been numerous enough to have been a nuisance; and the same remark may apply to the “Fox-holes” at Benthall. As the district became more cultivated and the country more populated, the range of these animals became more and more circumscribed, and the cherished sports of our forefathers came to form the staple topics of neighbours’ oft-told tales.
Within our own recollection the badger was to be found at Benthall Edge; but he had two enemies—the fox, who sometimes took possession of his den and drove him from the place, and the miners of Broseley and Benthall, who were usually great dog-fanciers, and who were accustomed to steal forth as the moon rose above the horizon, and intercept him as he left his long winding excavation among the rocks, in order to make sport for them at their annual wakes.
The Wrekin Forest—Hermit of Mount St. Gilbert—Poachers upon the King’s Preserves—Extent of the Forest—Haye of Wellington—Robert Forester—Perquisites—Hunting Matches—Singular Grant to John Forester—Sir Walter Scott’s Tony Foster a Member of the Shropshire Forester Family—Anthony Foster Lord of the Manor of Little Wenlock—The Foresters of Sutton and Bridgnorth—Anthony Foster altogether a different Character from what Sir Walter Scott represents him.
“I am clad in youthful green, I other colours scorn,
My silken bauldrick bears my bugle or my horn,
Which, setting to my lips, I wind so loud and shrill,
As makes the echoes shout from every neighbouring hill;
My dog-hook at my belt, to which my thong is tied,
My sheaf of arrows by, my wood-knife by my side,
My cross-bow in my hand, my gaffle on my rack,
To bend it when I please, or if I list to slack;
My hound then in my thong, I, by the woodman’s art,
Forecast where I may lodge the goodly hie-palm’d hart,
To view the grazing herds, so sundry times I use,
Where by the loftiest head I knew my deer to choose;
And to unherd him, then I gallop o’er the ground,
Upon my well-breathed nag, to cheer my learning hound.
Some time I pitch my toils the deer alive to take,
Some time I like the cry the deep-mouthed kennel make;
Then underneath my horse I stalk my game to strike,
And with a single dog to hunt or hurt him as I like.”Drayton.
It is important, to the completion of our sketch of the earlier features of the country, that we cross the Severn and say a word or two respecting the forest of the Wrekin, of which the early ancestors of the present Willey family had charge. This famous hill must then have formed a feature quite as conspicuous in the landscape as it does at present. As it stood out above the wide-spreading forest that surrounded it, it must have looked like a barren island amid a waving sea of green. From its position and outline too, it appears to have been selected during the struggles which took place along the borders as a military fortress, judging from the entrenchments near its summit, and the tumuli both here and in the valley at its foot, where numbers of broken weapons have been found. At a later period it is spoken of as Mount St. Gilbert, in honour, it is said, of a recluse to whom the Gilbertine monks ascribe their origin. Whether the saint fixed his abode in the cleft called the Needle’s Eye (which tradition alleges to have been made at the Crucifixion), or on some other part of the hill, there is no evidence to show; but that there was a hermitage there at one time, and that whilst the woods around were stocked with game, is clear. It is charitable to suppose, however, that the good man who pitched his tent so high above his fellows abstained from such tempting luxuries, that on his wooden trencher no king’s venison smoked, and that fare more becoming gown and girdle contented him; so at least it must have been reported to Henry III., who, to give the hermit, Nicholas de Denton by name, “greater leisure for holy exercises, and to support him during his life, so long as he should be a hermit on the aforesaid mountain,” granted six quarters of corn, to be paid by the Sheriff of Shropshire, out of the issues of Pendleston Mill, near Bridgnorth.
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.”
Robert Forester appears to have had charge not only of the Haye of the Wrekin, but also of that of Morfe, for both of which he is represented as answering at the Assizes in February, 1262, for the eight years then past. A Robert Forester is also described as one chosen with the sheriff, the chief forester, and verderers of Shropshire in 1242, to try the question touching the expeditation of dogs on the estates of the Lilleshall Abbey, and his seal still remains attached to the juror’s return now in possession of the Sutherland family at Trentham.
A Roger de Wellington, whom Mr. Eyton calls Roger le Forester the second, is also described as one of six royal foresters-of-the-fee, who, on June 6th, 1300, met to assist at the great perambulation of Shropshire forests. He was admitted a burgess of Shrewsbury in 1319. John Forester, his son and heir, it is supposed, was baptised at Wellington, and attained his majority in 1335; [63] and a John Forester—a lineal descendant of his—obtained the singular grant, now at Willey, from Henry VIII., privileging him to wear his hat in the royal presence. After the usual formalities the grant proceeds:—“Know all men, our officers, ministers, &c. Forasmuch as we be credibly informed that our trusty and well-beloved John Foster, of Wellington, in the county of Salop, Gentilman, for certain diseases and infirmities which he has on his hede, cannot consequently, without great danger and jeopardy, be discovered of the same. Whereupon we, in consideration thereof, by these presents, licenced hym from henceforth to use and were his bonet on his said hede,” &c.
It will be observed that in this grant the name occurs in its abridged form as Foster, and in the Sheriffs of Shropshire and many old documents it is variously spelt as Forester, Forster, and Foster, a circumstance which during the progress of the present work suggested an inquiry, the result of which—mainly through the researches of a painstaking friend—may add weight and interest to the archæological lore previously collected in connection with the family. It appears, for instance, that the Anthony Foster of Sir Walter Scott’s “Kenilworth” was descended from the Foresters of Wellington; that he held the manor of Little Wenlock and other property in Shropshire in 1545; that the Richard Forester or Forster who built the interesting half-timbered mansion, [64] still standing in the Cartway, Bridgnorth, where Bishop Percy, the author of “Percy’s Reliques,” was born, was also a member; and that Anne, the daughter of this Richard Forester or Forster, was married in 1575 at Sutton Maddock to William Baxter, the antiquary, mentioned by the Rev. George Bellet at page 183 of the “Antiquities of Bridgnorth.” Mr. Bellet, speaking of another mansion of the Foresters at Bridgnorth, says, “One could wish, as a mere matter of curiosity, that a remarkable building, called ‘Forester’s Folly,’ had been amongst those which escaped the fire; for it was built by Richard Forester, the private secretary of no less famous a person than Bishop Bonner, and bore the above appellation most likely on account of the cost of its erection.” William Baxter, who, it will be seen, was a descendant of the Foresters, has an interesting passage in his life referring to the circumstance. [66]
Richard Forester’s Old Mansion
We believe that the Forester pedigree in the MS. collection of Shropshire pedigrees, now in possession of Sidney Stedman Smith, Esq., compiled by that careful and painstaking genealogist the late Mr. Hardwick, fully confirms this, and shows that the Foresters of Watling Street, the Foresters or Forsters of Sutton Maddock, and the Forsters or Fosters of Evelith Manor were the same family. The arms, like the names, differ; but all have the hunter’s horn stringed; and if any doubt existed as to the identity of the families, it is still further removed by a little work entitled “An Inquiry concerning the death of Amy Robsart,” by S. J. Pettigrew, F.R.S., F.S.A. Mr. Pettigrew says: “Anthony Forster was the fourth son of Richard Forster, of Evelith, in Shropshire, by Mary, daughter of Sir Thomas Gresley, of an ancient family. The Anthony Forster of Sir Walter Scott’s novel is supposed to have been born about 1510; and a relative, Thomas, was the prior of an ecclesiastical establishment at Wombridge, the warden of Tong, and the vicar of Idsall, as appears by his altar-tomb in Shifnal Church. He is conjectured to have attended to the early education of Anthony, whose after-connection with Berks is accounted for by the fact that he married somewhere between 1530 and 1540 a Berkshire lady, Ann, daughter of Reginald Williams, eldest son of Sir John Williams. He purchased Cumnor Place, in Berks, of William Owen, son of Dr. G. Owen, physician to Henry VIII. He was not, therefore, as Sir Walter Scott alleges, a tenant of the Earl of Leicester, to whom, however, he left Cumnor Place by will at his death in 1572.” It is gratifying to find that Mr. Pettigrew, in his “Inquiry,” shows how groundless was the charge built up by Sir Walter Scott against the Earl of Leicester; and, what is still more to our purpose, that he completely clears the character of Anthony Forster, who was supposed to have been the agent in the foul deed, of the imputation, and shows him to have been quite a different character to that represented by this distinguished writer. This, indeed, may be inferred from the fact that Anthony Forster not only enjoyed the confidence of his neighbours, but so grew in favour with the people of Abingdon that he acceded in 1570 to the representation of that borough, and continued to represent it till he died; also, from the inscription on his tomb, which is as follows:—
“Anthonius Forster, generis generosa propago,
Cumneræ Dominus Barcheriensis erat;
Armiger, Armigero prognatus patre Ricardo,
Qui quondam Iphlethæ Salopiensis erat.
Quatuor ex isto fluxerunt stemmate nati,
Ex isto Antonius stemmate quartus erat.
Mente sagax, animo præcellens, corpore promptus;
Eloquii dulcis, ore disertus erat.
In factis probitas fuit, in sermonte venustas,
In vultu gravitas, religione fides;
In patriam pietas, in egenos grata voluntas,
Accedunt reliquis annumeranda bonis:
Sic quod cuncta rapit, rapuit non omnia Lethum,
Sed quæ Mors rapuit, vivida fama dedit.”
Then follow these laudatory verses:—
Cleared of the slanders which had been so unjustly heaped upon his memory, one can welcome Anthony Forster, the Squire of Cumnor, as a member of the same distinguished family from which the Willey Squire and the present ennobled house of Willey are descended. [69] But before introducing the Squire, it is fitting to say something of Willey itself.
Willey, close Neighbour to the Royal Chace of Shirlot—Etymology of the Name—Domesday—The Willileys—The Lacons—The Welds and the Foresters—Willey Old Hall—Cumnor Hall as described by Sir Walter Scott—Everything Old and Quaint—How Willey came into possession of the Foresters.
“’Bove the foliage of the wood
An antique mansion might you then espy,
Such as in the days of our forefathers stood,
Carved with device of quaintest imagery.”
To commence with its earlier phase, it was clear that Willey would be close neighbour to the Royal Chace of Shirlot, and that it must have been about the centre of the wooded country previously described. The name is said to be of Saxon origin; and in wattle and dab and wicker-work times, when an osier-bed was probably equal in value to a vineyard, the place might have been as the word seems to suggest, one where willows grew, seeing that various osiers, esteemed by basket makers, coopers, and turners, still flourish along the stream winding past it to the Severn. The name is therefore redolent of the olden time, and is one of those old word-pictures which so often occur to indicate the earlier features of the country. Under its agricultural Saxon holders, however, Willey so grew in value and importance that when the Conquest was complete, and King William’s generals were settling down to enjoy the good things the Saxons had provided, and as Byron has it—
“Manors
Were their reward for following Billy’s banners,”
Willey fell to the lot of a Norman, named Turold, who, as he held twelve other manors, considerately permitted the Saxon owner to continue in possession under him. Domesday says: “The same Turold holds Willey, and Hunnit (holds it) of him.” “Here is half a hide geldable. Here is arable land sufficient for ii ox teams. Here those ox teams are, together with ii villains, and ii boors. Its value is v shillings.” At the death of Hunnit the manor passed to a family which took its name from the place; and considerable additions resulted from the marriage of one, Warner de Williley, with the heiress of Roger Fitz Odo, of Kenley. Warner de Williley appears to have been a person of some consequence, from the fact that he was appointed to make inquiry concerning certain encroachments upon the royal forests of Shropshire; but an act of oppression and treachery, in which his wife had taken a part, against one of his own vassals, whose land he coveted, caused him to be committed to prison. Several successive owners of Willey were overseers of Shirlot Forest; and Nicholas, son and heir of Warner, was sued for inattention to his duties; an under tenant also, profiting probably by the laxity of his lord, at a later period was charged and found guilty of taking a stag from the king’s preserves, on Sunday, June 6th, 1253. Andrew de Williley joined Mountford against King Edward, and fell August 4th, 1265, in the battle of Evesham; in consequence of which act of disloyalty the property was forfeited to the crown, and the priors of Wenlock, who already had the seigniory usual to feudal lords, availing themselves of the opportunity, managed so to increase their power that a subsequent tenant, as shown by the Register at Willey, came to Wenlock (1388), and “before many witnesses did homage and fealty,” and acknowledged himself to hold the place of the lord prior by carrying his frock to parliament. They succeeded too, after several suits, in establishing their rights to the advowson of the Church, founded and endowed by the lords of the place.
By the middle of the 16th century Willey had passed to the hands of the old Catholic family of the Lacons, one of whom, Sir Roland, held it in 1561, together with Kinlet; and from them it passed to Sir John Weld, who is mentioned as of Willey in 1666. He married the daughter of Sir George Whitmore, and his son, George Weld, sat for the county with William Forester, who married the daughter of the Earl of Salisbury, and voted with him in favour of the succession of the House of Hanover.
Who among the former feudal owners of Willey built the old hall, is a question which neither history nor tradition serves to solve. Portions of the basement of the old buildings seem to indicate former structures still more ancient, like spurs of some primitive rock cropping up into a subsequent formation. Contrasted with the handsome modern freestone mansion occupied by the Right Hon. Lord Forester close by, the remains shown in our engraving look like a stranded wreck, past which centuries of English life have gone sweeping by. Some of the walls are three feet in thickness, and the buttressed chimneys, and small-paned windows—“set deep in the grey old tower”—make it a fair type of country mansions and a realisation of ideas such as the mind associates with the homes of the early owners of Willey.
Although occupying a slight eminence, it really nestles in the hollow, and in its buff-coloured livery it stands pleasingly relieved by the high ground of Shirlot and its woods beyond. In looking upon its quaint gables, shafts, and chimneys, one feels that when it was complete it must have had something of the poetry of ancient art about it. Its irregularities of outline must have fitted in, as it were, with the undulating landscape, with which its walls are now tinted into harmony, by brown and yellow lichens. There was nothing assuming or pretentious about it; it was content to stand close neighbour to the public old coach road, which came winding by from Bridgnorth to Wenlock, and passed beneath the arch which now connects the high-walled gardens with the shaded walk leading to its modern neighbour, the present mansion of the Foresters.
Sir Walter Scott, in his description of Cumnor Place, speaks of woods closely adjacent, full of large trees, and in particular of ancient and mighty oaks, which stretched their giant arms over the high wall surrounding the demesne, thus giving it a secluded and monastic appearance. He describes its formal walks and avenues as in part choked up with grass, and interrupted by billets, and piles of brushwood, and he tells us of the old-fashioned gateway in the outer wall, and of the door formed of two huge oaken leaves, thickly studded with nails—like the gate of an old town. This picture of the approaches to the old mansion where Anthony Foster lived was no doubt a more faithful representation than the one he gave of the character of the man himself. At any rate, it is one which would in many respects apply to old Willey Hall and its surroundings at the time to which the great novelist refers. Everything was old and old-fashioned, even as its owners prided themselves it should be, and as grey as time and an uninterrupted growth of lichens in a congenial atmosphere could make it. Hollies, yews, and junipers were to be seen in the grounds, and outside were oaks and other aged trees, scathed by lightning’s bolt and winter’s blast. Here and there stood a few monarchs of the old forest in groups, each group a brotherhood sublime, carrying the thoughts back to the days when “from glade to glade, through wild copse and tangled dell, the wild deer bounded.” Trees, buildings, loose stones that had fallen, and still lay where they fell, were mossed with a hoar antiquity. Everything in fact seemed to say that the place had a history of its own, and that it could tell a tale of the olden time.
From the lawn and grounds adjoining a path led to the flower-gardens, intersected by gravel walks and grassy terraces, where a sun-dial stood, and where fountains, fed by copious supplies from unfailing springs on the high grounds of Shirlot, threw silvery showers above the shadows of the trees into the sunlight.
Willey, augmented by tracts of Shirlot, which was finally disafforested and apportioned two centuries since, came into possession of the Foresters by the marriage of Brook Forester, of Dothill Park, with Elizabeth, only surviving child and heiress of George Weld, of Willey; and George Forester, “the Squire of Willey,” was the fruit of that marriage.
Squire Forester—His Instincts and Tendencies—Atmosphere of the Times favourable for their Development—Thackeray’s Opinion—Style of Hunting—Dawn of the Golden Age of Fox-hunting, &c.
It will be seen that around Willey and Willey Hall, associations crowd which serve to make the place a household word and Squire Forester a man of mark with modern sportsmen and future Nimrods, at any rate if we consent to regard the Squire’s characteristics as outcrops of the instincts of an ancient stock. Descended from an ancestry so associated with forest sports and pursuits, he was like a moving plant which receives its nourishment from the air, and he lived chiefly through his senses. He was waylaid, as it were, on life’s path by hereditary tendencies, and his career was chequered by indulgences which, read in the light of the present day, look different from what they then did, when at court and in the country there were many to keep him in countenance. At any rate, Squire Forester lived in what may be called the dawn of the golden age of fox-hunting. We say dawn, because although Lord Arundel kept a pack of hounds some time between 1690 and 1700, and Sir John Tyrwhitt and Charles Pelham, Esq., did so in 1713, yet as Lord Wilton, in his “Sports and Pursuits of the English” states, the first real pack of foxhounds was established in the West of England about 1730. It was a period when, for various reasons, a reaction in favour of the manly sports of England’s earlier days had set in, one being the discovery that those distinguished for such sports were they who assisted most in winning on the battle-fields of the Continent the victories which made the British arms so renowned. Then, as now, it was found that they led to the development of the physical frame—sometimes to the removal of absolute maladies, and supplied the raw material of manliness out of which heroes are made—a view which the Duke of Wellington in some measure confirmed by the remark that the best officers he had under him during the Peninsular War were those whom he discovered to be bold riders to hounds. Lord Wilton, in his book just quoted, goes still further, by contending that “the greatness and glory of Great Britain are in no slight degree attributable to her national sports and pastimes.”
That such sports contributed to the jollity and rollicking fun which distinguished the time in which Squire Forester lived, there can be little doubt. In his “Four Georges,” Thackeray gives it as his opinion, that “the England of our ancestors was a merrier England than the island we inhabit,” and that the people, high and low, amused themselves very much more. “One hundred and twenty years ago,” he says, “every town had its fair, and every village its wake. The old poets have sung a hundred jolly ditties about great cudgel playings, famous grinnings through horse-collars, great Maypole meetings, and morris-dances. The girls used to run races, clad in very light attire; and the kind gentry and good parsons thought no shame in looking on.” He adds, “I have calculated the manner in which statesmen and persons of condition passed their time; and what with drinking and dining, and supping and cards, wonder how they managed to get through their business at all.” That they did manage to work, and to get through a considerable amount of it, is quite clear; and probably they did so with all the more ease in consequence of the amusement which often came first, as in the case of “Naughty idle Bobby,” as Clive was called when a boy; and not less so in that of Pitt, who did so much to develop that spirit of patriotism of which we boast. It was a remark of Addison, that “those who have searched most into human nature observe that nothing so much shows the nobleness of the soul as that its felicity consists in action;” and that “every man has such an active principle in him that he will find out something to employ himself upon in whatever place or state he is posted.”
Those familiar with the Spectator will remember that he represents himself to have become so enamoured of the chase, that in his letters from the country he says: “I intend to hunt twice a week during my stay with Sir Roger, and shall prescribe the moderate use of this exercise to all my country friends as the best kind of physic for mending a bad constitution and preserving a good one.” He concludes with the following quotation from Dryden:—
“The first physicians by debauch were made;
Excess began, and sloth sustains the trade:
By chase our long-liv’d fathers earned their food;
Toil strung their arms and purified their blood.”
But a country squire of Mr. Forester’s day even more pithily and quaintly expresses himself as to the advantages to be derived from out-door sports:—“Those useful hours that our fathers employed on horseback in the fields,” he says, “are lost to their posterity between a stinking pair of sheets. Balls and operas, assemblies and masquerades, so exhaust the spirits of the puny creatures over-night, that yawning and chocolate are the main labours and entertainments of the morning. The important affairs of barber, milliner, perfumer, and looking-glass, are their employ till the call to dinner, and the bottle or gaming table demand the tedious hours that intervene before the return of the evening assignations. What wonder, then, if such busy, trifling, effeminate mortals are heard to swear they have no notion of venturing their bodies out-of-doors in the cold air in the morning? I have laughed heartily to see such delicate smock-faced animals judiciously interrupting their pinches of snuff with dull jokes upon fox-hunters; and foppishly declaiming against an art they know no more of than they do of Greek. It cannot be expected they should speak well of a toil they dare not undertake; or that the fine things should be fit to work without doors, which are of the taylor’s creation.”
The Willey Kennels—Colonel Apperley on Hunting a Hundred Years ago—Character of the Hounds—Portraits of Favourites—Original Letters—Style.
“Tantivy! the huntsman he starts for the chase,
In good humour as fresh as the morn,
While health and hilarity beam from his face,
At the sound of the mellow-toned horn.”
The style of hunting in vogue in Squire Forester’s day was, in the opinion of authorities on the subject, even more favourable to the development of bodily strength and endurance than now. The late Mr. Thursfield, of Barrow, was wont to say that it was no unusual thing to see Moody taking the hounds to cover before daylight in a morning. The Squire himself, like most other sportsmen of the period, was an early man.
Col. Apperley says: “With our forefathers, when the roost-cock sounded his clarion, they sounded their horn, throwing off the pack so soon as they could distinguish a stile from a gate, or, in other words, so soon as they could see to ride to the hounds. Then it was that the hare was hunted to her form by the trail, and the fox to his kennel by the drag. Slow as this system would be deemed, it was a grand treat to the real sportsman. What, in the language of the chase, is called the ‘tender-nosed hound,’ had an opportunity of displaying itself to the inexpressible delight of his master; and to the field—that is, to the sportsmen who joined in the diversion—the pleasures of the day were enhanced by the moments of anticipation produced by the drag. As the scent grew warmer, the certainty of finding was confirmed; the music of the pack increased; and the game being up, away went the hounds in a crash. Both trail and drag are at present but little thought of. Hounds merely draw over ground most likely to hold the game they are in quest of, and thus, in a great measure, rely upon chance for coming across it; for if a challenge be heard, it can only be inferred that a fox has been on foot in the night—the scent being seldom sufficient to carry the hounds up to his kennel. Advantages, however, as far as sport is concerned, attend the present hour of meeting in the field, independently of the misery of riding many miles in the dark, which sportsmen in the early part of the last century were obliged to do. The game, when it is now aroused, is in a better state to encounter the great speed of modern hounds; having had time to digest the food it has partaken of in the night previous to its being stirred. But it is only since the great increase of hares and foxes that the aid of the trail and drag could be dispensed with without the frequent recurrence of blank days, which now seldom happen. Compared with the luxurious ease with which the modern sportsman is conveyed to the field—either lolling in his chaise and four, or galloping along at the rate of twenty miles an hour on a hundred-guinea hack—the situation of his predecessor was all but distressing. In proportion to the distance he had to ride by starlight were his hours of rest broken in upon, and exclusive of the time that operation might consume another serious one was to be provided for—this was the filling his hair with powder and pomatum until it could hold no more, and forming it into a well-formed knot, or club, as it was called, by his valet, which cost commonly a good hour’s work. The protecting mud boots, the cantering hack, the second horse in the field, were luxuries unknown to him. His well-soiled buckskins, and brown-topped boots, would have cut an indifferent figure in the presence of a modern connoisseur by a Leicestershire cover side.” “Notwithstanding all this, however,” he adds, “we are inclined strongly to suspect that, out of a given number of gentlemen taking the field with hounds, the proportion of really scientific sportsmen may have been in favour of the olden times.”
The Willey Kennels were within easy reach of the Hall, between Willey and Shirlot, where the pleasant stream before alluded to goes murmuring on its way through the Smithies to the Severn. But in order to save his dogs unnecessary exertion there were others on the opposite, or Wrekin, side of the river—
being mottoes of the period. The dogs were of the “heavy painstaking breed” that “stooped to their work.” How, it was said,
“Can the fox-hound ever tell,
Unless by pains he takes to smell,
Where Reynard’s gone?”
Experience taught the Squire the importance of a principle now more generally acted upon, that of selecting the qualities required in the hounds he bred from; and by this means he obtained developments of swiftness and scent that made his pack one good horses only of that day could keep up with. He prided himself much upon the blood of his best hounds, knew every one he had by name, and was familiar with its pedigree. Portraits of four of his favourites were painted on canvas and hung in the hall, with lines beneath expressive of their qualities, and the dates at which the paintings were made. The Right Hon. Lord Forester takes great care of these, as showing in what way the best dogs of that day differed from those of the present; and through his kindness we have been enabled to get drawings made, of which his lordship was pleased to approve, and we fancy there is no better judge living.
Three of these are shown in our engraving at the head of this chapter.
Pigmy, the bitch in the group nearest to the fox, is said to have been the smallest hound then known. Underneath the portrait are the following lines:—
“Behold in miniature the foxhound keen,
Thro’ rough and smooth a better ne’er was seen;
As champion here the beauteous Pigmy stands,
She challenges the globe, both home and foreign lands.”1773.
The one the farthest from the fox, is a white dog, Pilot; and underneath the painting is the following:—
“Pilot rewards his master Rowley’s care,
And swift as lightning skims the transient air;
Famed for the chase, from cover always first,
His tongue and sterne proclaimed an arrant burst.”1774.
The dog in front, with his head thrown up, is Childers; and underneath the picture are these lines:—
“Sportsmen look up, old Childers’ picture view,
His virtues many were, his failings few;
Reynard with dread oft heard his awful name,
And grateful Musters thus rewards his fame.”1772.
The following letters from Mr. Forester to Walter Stubbs, Esq., of Beckbury, afterwards of Stratford-on-Avon, where he became distinguished in connection with the Warwickshire Hunt, show how particular he was in his selection. It would seem that whilst admiring the Duke of Grafton’s hounds, which under the celebrated Tom Rose (“Honest old Tom,” as he was called), who used to say, “a man must breed his pack to suit his country,” gained some celebrity, he not unnaturally preferred his own. We give exact copies of two of his letters, they are so characteristic of the man. In all the letters we have seen he began with a considerable margin at the side of the paper, but always filled up the space with a postscript:—
“Willey Hall, March 15, 1795.
“Dear Sir,
“I beg leave to return you my hearty thanks for your civility in sending your servant to Apley with three couple of my hounds that run into your’s ye other day. Could I have returned compliment in sending ye three couple, that were missing from you, I should have been happy in ye discharge of that duty, so incumbent on every good sportsman. I hear you are fond of the Duke of Grafton’s hounds. It’s a sort I have ever admired, and have received favours from his Grace in that line, having been acquainted together from our infancy up; and on course, most likely to procure no very bad sort from his Grace’s own hands. I have sent you (as a present) a little bitch of ye Grafton kind, which I call Whymsy, lately taken up from quarters, and coming towards a year old. She’s rather under size for me, or otherwise I see not her fault. She’s, in my opinion, a true Non-Pareil. Your acceptance of her from me now, and any other hound of ye Grafton sort, that may come in near her size, will afford me singular satisfaction; as I make it a rule that no man who shows me civility shall find me wanting in making a proper return.
“I am, dear sir,
“Your obliged and very humble servant,
“G. Forester.
“P.S.—Next year Whymsy will be completely fit for entrance, but rather too young for this. The Duke’s hounds rather run small enough for this country. I see no other defect in them. They are invincibly stout, and perfectly just in every point that constitutes your real true fox hound.”