SHERWOOD FOREST.  
New Forest, as we have now seen, still retains its completeness as a forest—its herds of deer, its keepers going their daily rounds, its wild horses, and swine almost as wild, and all its ancient extent of wastes, woodlands, and forest people. A widely different condition does this once noble forest exhibit. It was more than all celebrated as the scene of the exploits of Robin Hood, and his merry men. In his day, it extended from the town of Nottingham to Whitby in Yorkshire, or rather it and the forest of Whitby lay open to each other, in perfect contiguity. At a much later day it extended far into Derbyshire; but, after many dis-afforestings and encroachments, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, it contained an equal space with that of New Forest at present. Here our Norman kings delighted to come and enjoy their hunting in summer at their palace of Clypstone, built by Henry II.; and an especially favourite place of John, whose mark upon the forest trees growing in that neighbourhood, has been repeatedly found of late years, in cutting them up for timber.
It was a pleasant region; varied with its hill and dale, fair lakes,—some of which yet remain;—rivulets of most beautiful clearness; woods of noble growth; and the abundant Trent rolling along its southern side. In it lay Nottingham, Mansfield, Hardwick, Welbeck, Thoresby, since the birthplace of Lady Mary Wortley Montague; Newstead, the abode of Lord Byron; Annesley, the heritage of Mary Chaworth, and many another ample domain.[381] It was governed by a warden, his lieutenant, and a steward; a bow-bearer, and a ranger; four verderers, twelve regarders, four agistors, and twelve keepers in the main forest, under the chief forester, who held it in fee, with liberty to destroy and kill at pleasure, reserving 100 deer in each walk. There were also several woodwards for every township within the forest, and one for every principal wood. It had also five hays, or royal parks, each fenced in, and furnished with its lodge; and having each a forester, going his rounds on horseback, with a page; and two foresters on foot without a page. These hays were Best-wood, Lindby-hay, Welhay, Birkland cum Bilhay, and Clypstone. “In these hays no man commons,” says the Inquisition of King Henry III., taken in the thirty-fifth year of his reign, at St. John’s house in Nottingham. They were especial reserves of game for the royal use, which was not to be disturbed by the intrusion of any other men, or their cattle, on any pretence.
Besides these, there were extensive woods and demesnes: Newstead, Lyndhurst, Welbeck, Rufford, Romewood, Clumber, Kingshaghe, Carburton, Arnall, Edwinstowe, Mansfield-Woodhouse, Hye Forest, Kyegill, and Ravenshede, Bulwell Risse, Outhesland (qy. the land of Robert Fitzouth, or Robin Hood’s land?) the barony of Southwell, and others, full of great woods of oak, many of them 700 years old; thirteen hundred head of red deer at the very last Inquisition, besides fallow deer without number.[22] All this is broken up, and dispersed as a dream. These royal hays and demesnes have been bestowed in grants by different monarchs: as Newstead by Henry VIII. to Sir John Byron; Bestwood by Charles II., to the Duke of St. Albans, his son by Nell Gwynn; and so on, or[382] sold. The great woods have fallen under the axe; and repeated enclosures have reduced the open forest to that part which formerly went by the name of the Hye-Forest; a tract of land of about ten miles long, by three or four wide, extending from the Nottingham road, near Mansfield west, to Clipstone Park east. This tract is, for the most part, bare of trees. Near Mansfield there remains a considerable wood, Harlowe Wood, and a fine scattering of old oaks near Berry-hill, in the same neighbourhood; but the greater part is now an open waste, stretching in a succession of low hills, and long winding valleys dark with heather. A few solitary and battered oaks standing here and there, the last melancholy remnants of these vast and ancient woods; the beautiful springs; swift and crystaline brooks; and broad sheets of water lying abroad amid the dark heath, and haunted by numbers of wild ducks and the heron, still remain. Nature is not easily deprived of these; and in summer, when the plover and the lark build there, and send along those brown dales their merry whistle, or loud cries, and in autumn when the whole waste bursts into a blaze of crimson beauty with the blossoming heather, it is still, stripped as it is, a charming place for a contemplative ride or stroll. Here twenty years ago, Captain Cartwright might be seen following his hawks, and here still you meet a few sportsmen, with their fine dogs leaping amongst the long heather and red fern.
[22] A curious fact is apparent on the face of “A Vewe taken by special commandment from his Majesty to the Lord Warden of his forest, of all the Red Deer in this forest, 1616.” The warden was obliged to maintain 100 head of red deer in each of the twelve walks—1200 in the whole. In this inquiry there proved to be 1260; but in Annesley, the property of the Chaworths, and Newstead, the property of the Byrons, there were only ten deer altogether. These Byrons and Chaworths were always notorious Nimrods, and suffered none to escape them. In Papplewick too, the adjoining parish, there were only two! The keepers indeed affirmed that “some days” there were twenty in Annesley Hills, and fourteen in Newstead Woods, but they did not appear to the Commissioners. In another “Vewe,” taken in 1635, though the deer had increased in other walks, so that the total numbers were 1367, in Newstead and Annesley there were only 19!
But at the Clipstone extremity of the forest, still remains a remnant of its ancient woodlands unrifled, except of its deer—a specimen of what the whole once was, and a specimen of consummate beauty and interest. Birkland and Bilhaghe taken together form a tract of land extending from Ollerton, along the side of Thoresby Park, the seat of Earl Manvers, to Clipstone Park, of about five miles in length, and one or two in width,—Bilhaghe is a forest of oaks; and is clothed with the most impressive aspect of age that can perhaps be presented to the eye in these kingdoms. Stonehenge does not give you a feeling of greater eld, because it is not composed of a material so easily acted on by the elements. But the hand of time has been on these woods, and has stamped upon them a most imposing character. I cannot imagine a traveller coming upon this spot without being startled, and asking himself—“what have we got here?” It is the blasted and battered ruin[383] of a forest. A thousand years, ten thousand tempests, lightnings, winds, and wintry violence, have all flung their utmost force on these trees, and there they stand, trunk after trunk, scathed, hollow, grey, gnarled; stretching out their bare, sturdy arms, or their mingled foliage and ruin—a life in death. All is grey and old. The ground is grey beneath, the trees are grey with clinging lichens, the very heather and fern that spring beneath them have a character of the past. If you turn aside, and step amongst them, your feet sink in a depth of moss and dry vegetation that is the growth of ages, or rather that ages have not been able to destroy. You stand and look round, and in the height of summer, all is silent; it is like the fragment of a world worn out and forsaken. These were the trees under which King John pursued the red deer 600 years ago. These were the oaks beneath which Robin Hood led up his bold band of outlaws. These are the oaks which have stood while king after king reigned; while the Edwards and Henrys subdued Ireland, and ravaged Scotland and France; while all Europe was seeking to rescue Jerusalem from the Saracens; while the wars of York and Lancaster deluged the soil of all this kingdom with blood; while Henry VIII. overthrew popery, wives, ministers, and martyrs with one strong, ruthless hand; while Elizabeth, with an equal hand of unshrinking might and decision, made all Europe tremble at a woman’s name, and stand astonished at a woman’s jealousy, when she butchered her cousin, the Queen of Scots. Here they stood, while the monarchy of England fell to the ground before Cromwell and the Covenanters; while Charles II., restored to his realm, but not to wisdom, revelled; while under a new dynasty, the fortunes of England have been urging through good and evil their course to a splendour and dominion strangely mingled with suffering and disquiet, yet giving prospect of a Christian glory beyond all precedent and conception. Through all this these trees have here stood silently—and here they are! monuments of ages that cannot be seen without raising in our souls remembrance of all these mighty things. To the contemplative mind they are inscribed all over with charact............