FORESTRY ot an assart to pay 4^. an acre to the crown, and at the time of the assart being made to pay a fine to the bailiff for the warrant. In a list of assarts allowed by Warner Engaine at 4^. an acre, the following are the proportions and the fines in six consecutive cases : I acre, 2s. fine ; 4 acres, 6s. fine ; I acre, 2s. Set. fine ; 3 acres, 6s. fine ; 2 acres, 45. fine ; and 3 acres, 3*. fine. When the tenants of Peak forest assarts died, their heirs paid double rent for the first year, and the king had also the second best beast, the first going to the Church. These Peak assarts, which were very numerous at this date, were for the most part small, averaging about 5 or 6 acres ; they varied from 60 acres to J acre. Another form of forest encroachment was termed purpresture, a term difficult to define because it was somewhat differently applied in different forests. More usually, as was the case at this eyre, it signified the building of a house or homestead within the forest bounds. The purprestures presented at this eyre were the rolls of new houses built since the last pleas of 1216. One hundred and thirty-one persons had built new houses without warrant, and were therefore in mercy, and were liable to fines. In almost a like number of cases, namely, one hundred and twenty-seven, new houses had been raised within the king's demesnes with the licence of the bailiff. An average increase of eight new houses a year during the first thirty- five years of Henry III.'s reign speaks well as to the degree of prosperity then enjoyed by the forest of the Peak. The mineral and turbary rights of this forest also came under review at this eyre. Under turbary it is mentioned that the townships of Hucklow, Tideswell, Wormhill, Toftes, Buxton, Bowden, Aston, and Thornhill took turves without requiring licence. Another source of profit to the bailiffs was on escaped cattle ; under this head Earl Ferrers took 12. The thirty-six jurors also made a return as to the rights of the foresters of fee. For Campana, Robert le Archer, Richard Daniel, William de Wormhill, Roger Fitz Adam, and Thomas Foljambe, whose ancestors had been enfeoffed by William Peverel, were the foresters. The following rights were admitted that when the bailiff allotted pasture in any of their bailiwicks to anyone, that then in the same place the foresters' oxen or cattle had free pasture ; that their swine were quit of pannage fees ; that they were entitled to wood for the repair of their houses and hedges ; that they took one pig, at their choice, at the time of masting of those the king had in agistment ; and that if important business took them from their bailiwick they might during absence appoint a deputy. Entry is also made of the foresters of the two other wards. The foresters of Campana and Longdendale had the right to have a servant under them who was suffered to make oath concerning vert and venison ; but this right was not possessed by the foresters of Hopedale. From the fragments of a roll concerning the marriages of the foresters of fee, it appears that on the death of a forester who left daughters and no sons, only the eldest daughter could succeed to the fee. The accounts of Gervase de Bernake, bailiff of the Peak for 1255-6, are of special value, as they contain almost the only specific entries that have yet been found among the stores of the Public Record Office of damage done to stock by wolves. Mention is made therein of a colt (' pullum masculum') strangled by a wolf in Edale. In a list of waifs that accrued to the lord, there is reference to two sheep which were also strangled by wolves. 1 Bailiff Bernake's accounts are also interesting because of the gifts that he made to the Campana lodge or Chamber of the Forest. To the chapel he gave a sufficient vestment, an albe, an amice, a sufficient rochet, a super-altar, an altar cloth made out of an old chasuble, a silver chalice gilded inside, and an old missal and a gradual. To the hall he gave five tables, six old small shields, and a chessboard ; also two tuns of wine, one full and the other having a depth of 12 inches. He also presented various utensils to the kitchen. The Close Rolls of the beginning of the reign of Edward I. supply several particulars with regard to the forest. Roger Lestrange is mentioned as keeper of the castle and forest in June, 1274, and again in May, 1275.2 At the latter date Lestrange was directed by the crown to permit Nicholas de Lenn to have, during good behaviour and until otherwise 1 Ministers' Accounts, 1 f 9 . The reference, thirty years later, to the trapping of wolves, proves that they were fairly frequent in the forest at the time of the eyre in 1286. There is another thirteenth- century reference to Derbyshire forest wolves, which seems to have escaped the notice of county and other writers. The Hundred Rolls of the beginning of Edward I.'s reign record that Roger Savage was asked by what right he maintained dogs to take foxes, hares, wild cats, and wolves, and replied that he was the successor of William Walkelin, who had a royal grant to that effect. 8 Close, 2 Edw. I. m. 7 ; 3 Edw. I. m. 15. 401
