132 THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
moated houses predominate, suggests that it was in that part of
Essex that settlement was most active in mediaeval times. It
supports the theory suggested by the examination of successive
assessment maps that the period of the late Middle Ages witnessed
the main clearing of the Boulder Clay Forest. Plotting of these
moated and unmoated houses of mediaeval date, and shading in
woodland areas to accommodate such a distribution, showed a
skeleton-like outline of the Forest lands of 1086 (Fig. 6). The
south-western core had considerably shrunken, the two north-
east trending spurs being represented by a series of scattered
"islands" of woodland, whilst the eastern wooded areas had
almost disappeared. Further support seems to be given to the
evidence of the assessment maps, since those areas of woodland
on the Boulder Clay are seen to correspond to the few parishes
with low assessments on that soil in 1412.
Whilst the legal bounds of the Forest, so ably described
by Fisher, must be treated with doubt in so far as they concern
actual forest, it is noticeable that during the mediaeval perambu-
lations the south-western "within the Forest" area and the
crown demesnes correspond to the forested areas suggested
for those times.
The western area of the County which appears in the 1225
perambulation as left to the King to decide, is by the later
perambulation of 1301 held to be without the Forest. This is
most significant in view of the fact that most of this western
area is Boulder Clay, and the later decision to hold it without
the Forest coincides with a time of apparent forest clearing in
that region.
Thus, at the close of the Middle Ages, the Forest of Essex
was mainly confined to the south-west of the county around
Epping and Hainault. In the final assessment of 1638, to which
reference has been made, the individual parishes show what
part of the levy relates to forest taxes.8 Very few Essex parishes
fall within this category, showing the slight amount of woodland
existing in the County in the seventeenth century, but the
distribution of those whose names appear in the forest list
seems significant. There is mention of several parishes around
Hockley and Prittlewell, another series of woodland parishes
8 Public Record Office. State Papers 16. Ship money.