73
A FOREST DOCUMENT OF THE EIGHTEENTH
CENTURY.
By I. CHALKLEY GOULD.
AS considerable interest was manifested in the Order (shown on
the opposite page) when it was exhibited at our meeting at
Stratford, on March 9th, 1895, I have the pleasure to record a few
remarks then made.
It is an Exchequer Order of George II., dated the 14th day of
January, 1741,1 relating to the payment of a quarter's salary to certain
officials of our forest. The amount is £67 10s., to be disbursed by
Richard Earl Tylney. This earl was the Sir Richard Child who,
in 1715, erected Wanstead House, little dreaming that his white
stone palace would be utterly wiped out of existence in little more
than a hundred years.
The first payment is to the Chief Ranger—at that time John
Goodere, Esq. As the annual emolument was but £10, it is not
easy at first to see why county magistrates, such as Lord Castlemain,
John Wroth, Sir William Smijth, and others, cared for the office, but
privileges and perquisites were probably attached to the position, for
we find Sir William Smijth, in 1788, claimed the right to one buck
and one doe annually from each "walk" of the forest.2
The duties of the Chief Ranger appear to have been exercised,
not so much inside of the forest (as would be supposed), but rather
in the purlieus on the borders thereof. Mr. Fisher tells us that the
Rangers and Under-Rangers were sworn to "re-chase, and with their
hounds drive back again, the wild beasts of the Forest, as often as
they should range out of the Forest into their purlieus," etc.—an
arrangement originally made, not so much in the interest of the
farmers, whose crops would suffer from the deer, as for the sake of
the recreation of those royal personages and others who enjoyed the
pleasures of the chase in the woodland rides.
Our document next orders the payments of the woodward
and keepers of the various "walks," and of the four under-
keepers of the forest. The list is interesting as giving a some-
what different arrangement of walks from those referred to in
1 Prior to the "change of style" the year ended in March in all legal and official
documents.
2 Fisher (W. R.), "The Forest of Essex" (1887), p. 166.