APPENDIX 173
by Edward, his son. A pleasing unanimity has
marked the proceedings up to this point; but the
new joint-possessors do not seem to have succeeded
in maintaining it. For, on the Thursday next after
the Feast of Saint Barnabas the Apostle, in the
twenty-fourth year of the reign of King Henry, the
son of King John (14th June 1240 a.d.), Henry,
Abbot of Waltham, and Hugo, Abbot of Stratford,
found it desirable to meet in the mother church of
Chelmsford and there to compose certain differences
which had arisen over their common wood in
Loughton Snarrynge. The result of their meeting
is recorded in a charter, by which it is solemnly
provided that, when either Abbot wishes to fell
any timber, the bailiff of the one shall send for the
bailiff of the other, and the two shall, by common
consent, fix upon four trees of equal value, of which
the Abbot of Stratford shall have first choice as to
two, and the Abbot of Waltham take whichever
he prefers of the two remaining. Into the other
provisions we need not enter here.
" So far so good, says a logical reader : we have
a wood and we have monks ; but there is nothing
to show that the wood was called ' Monk Wood';
nor even if it were so called, that it was the
particular wood which now goes by that name. To
meet these objections, which are reasonable enough,
we must carry the reader from the thirteenth to
the second half of the sixteenth century, when
Elizabeth, by the Grace of God, was Queen, and,
withal, lady of the manor of Loughton, alias
Lucton.
" From a Commission to survey, dated 20th
May 1582, we learn that ' greate spoyle and waste '
was alleged to have been committed in the felling
of a parcel called ' Moncke Wood,' parcel of the
Manor of Loughton, lately sold to Robert Wroth,
Esq., by Thobie Houghton, surveyor of woods to
the Duchy of Lancaster. The three commissioners
named were directed to repair to Mouncke Wood,
then and there calling before them Robert Wrothe
and others. Their report states that they did so
on 1st June, and 'the same daie at Eppinge, did