OF THE FOREST OF WALTHAM.
3
that in Essex alone they amounted to £300,000" (Fisher, loc. cit.
p. 48), the king began to withdraw :
" On the 16th March in that year, being just four months after the meeting of
the Long Parliament, the Earl of Holland signified to the House of Lords, that the
King had commanded him to let them know 'that His Majesty, understanding
that the Forest Laws are grievous to the Subjects of this Kingdom, His Majesty
out of his Grace and Goodness to his People, is willing to lay down all the new
Bounds of his Forests in this Kingdom ; and that they shall be reduced to the
same Condition as they were before the late Justice Seat held'" (Fisher, loc, cit.,
pp. 48, 49).
It thus appears that the object of the Perambulation of 1641 was
to restore the bounds of the Forest of Waltham to what they were in
the twentieth year of James I. This information was obtained
upon oath from twenty-five witnesses who were examined by the
Commissioners in the presence of the Steward, Regarders, and Sub-
Rangers of the Forest at a Court of Inquiry held at Stratford Lang-
thorne on Sept. 8th, in the 17th year of Charles I. The full text of
the Perambulation is reprinted in The Essex Naturalist (Vol.
vi., p. 12) as an appendix to a paper by Mr. William Cole, the Hon.
Secretary of the Club, and to this the reader is referred for further
particulars. It will be gathered from the text referred to that the
north, west, and southern limits of the Forest were fixed by natural
or artificial boundaries already in existence, such as the River Roding,
Purlieu Banks, the River Lea, and the great Essex (Roman) Road to
Ilford and Romford, as shown on the sketch-map (Fig. 2), which has
been reproduced, with additions, from Fisher's "Forest of Essex."
On the east side, however, no such well-defined limit existed, and it
is presumably for this reason that the stones were set up. Seven of
these stones are mentioned in the Perambulation, and it is of great
interest to the writer to be able to state that six of them have now
been discovered and identified beyond question, viz., Richard's
Stone, Navestock Stone, Park Corner Stone, Mark's Stone, the
Warren Stone, and Havering Stone. In addition to these, another
stone, not referred to in the Perambulation, but entered in Carey's
Map as "Forest Bounds Stone," has been found in Whalebone Lane
opposite the house known as "Paulatim Lodge." I propose now to
place upon record the details of the search for and discovery of the
various stones mentioned.
Soon after the discovery of Richard's Stone, Mr. Coode Hore,
guided by Carey's map and the text of the Perambulation, succeeded
after much inquiry in finding the Navestock Stone about half-a-mile