CHAPTER IV.

THE WREKIN FOREST AND THE FORESTERS.

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.

[Picture: Needle’s Eye]

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.

[Picture: Deer and young]

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.”

[Picture: Atcham Church]

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}

[Picture: 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:—

“Argute resonas Citharæ prætendere chordas, Novit et Aonia concrepuisse lyra. Gaudebat terræ teneras defigere plantas, Et mira pulchras construere arte domos. Composita varias lingua formare loquelas, Doctus et edocta scribere multa manu.”

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.