ANENT A FOREST LODGE IN I444. 145
names of scientific chemists who are at work at different manu-
factories, with the view of ascertaining the extent to which
trained chemists are employed in British industries.
It will be seen from the foregoing sketch that the meeting
of the Delegates at Glasgow led to certain definite results, which
it is hoped may tend to improve the work of some of our local
scientific societies.
ANENT A FOREST LODGE IN 1444.
By W. C. WALLER, M.A., F.S.A.
On several occasions short articles on the Forest Lodges
have appeared in the Essex Naturalist, and when, a short time
ago, an ancient document referring to one of them chanced to
pass through my hands, it occurred to me that it might most
conveniently make a public appearance in the pages of the same
serial.1
It so happened that Mr. St. Clair Baddeley, a prominent
member of the Bath and Cheltenham Archaeological Society, in
examining some ancient MSS. belonging to a Gloucestershire
neighbour, Mr. Hyett, came upon a small, stout volume, in a
15th century hand, which seemed, on a cursory examination,
likely to prove serviceable for Essex history : and with that in view
he courteously and most kindly opened communications with an
official of the county society. When the book ultimately came to
me for examination I found that, so far as Essex was concerned,
its contents, as a whole, failed to bear out the rich promise of its
earlier pages. The first of these—it had no title page—proved
to be the beginning of a copy of the Perambulation of the Forest
of Essex made in 1301, of which a translation is given in Mr.
W. R. Fisher's Forest of Essex. One or two other documents of
like nature, relating to parts of the same Forest, followed, and
then the volume gradually revealed itself as a handbook of legal
practice, precedents, and formulae, some manorial and some
forestal. Of these latter a few were interesting, as furnishing
details of procedure, and that of which I am about to give an
English version, relates to Essex. Whether or no the original
document provided the initial stage in the erection of what is to-
1 Essex Naturalist, vi., 206 ; vii , 82; ix., 166; xi. 153.