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 characters of strange power. they shew us at a glance, and with a palpableness which few things besides possess, how far the day of their first growth is past by; how far the ages of feudalism and civilization lie asunder. all around them, instead of that ocean of[384] woods, heaths and morasses, come crowding up green fields, and the boundary-marks of free men; and if we were to see a hoary pilgrim suddenly make his appearance on the pavé of a great modern town, propped on his long staff, and belted in his grey robe, with his sandal-shoon and scallop-shell, we should not feel more strongly the discrepancy of life and character between him and the spruce population around him, than between these hoary and doddered oaks and the cultured country which hems them in.
but bilhaghe is only the half of the forest-remains here: in a continuous line with it lies birkland—a tract which bears its character in its name—the land of birches! it is a forest perfectly unique. it is equally ancient with bilhaghe, but it has a less dilapidated air. there are old and mighty oaks scattered through it, ay, some of them worn down to the very ultimatum of ruin, without leaf or bough, standing huge masses of blackness; but the birches, of which the main portion of the forest consists, cannot boast the longevity of oaks. their predecessors have perished over and over, and they, though noble and unrivalled of their kind, are infants compared with the oaken trunks which stand amongst them. birkland! it is a region of grace and poetry! i have seen many a wood, and many a wood of birches, and some of them amazingly beautiful too, in one quarter or another of this fair island, but in england nothing that can compare with this. it must be confessed that the birch woods which clothe the mountain sides, beautify the glens, and stud the romantic lochs of scotland, derive a charm from the lovely and sublime forms of those mountains, glens, and waters, which is not to be expected in this lowland country. the birch trees which rear their silvery stems, tree above tree, on the rocks of the trosachs; the birch woods that fill the delicious valleys of rosshire—which imparadise the glens and feather the heathery mountain-sides of glen-more nan alpin—the great glen of scotland, traversed by the caledonian canal—thousands of summer tourists can testify with me are lovely beyond description; but birkland has some advantages which they have not. its trees have reached a size that the northern ones have not; and the peculiar mixture of their lady-like grace with the stern and ample forms of these feudal oaks, produces an effect most fairylandish and unrivalled.
[385]
advance up this long avenue, which the noble owner of this forest tract has cut through it, and looking right and left as you proceed, you shall not be able long to refrain from turning into the tempting openings that ever and anon present themselves. enter which you please,—you cannot be wrong. you may wander for hours, and still find fresh aspects of woodland beauty. these winding tracks, just wide enough for a couple of people on horseback, or in a pony-phaeton to advance along, carpeted with a mossy turf that springs under your feet with a delicious elasticity, and closed in with shadowy trunks and flowery thickets—are they not lovely? and then you come to some sudden opening, where the long pensile branches of the birches, and the sweeping masses of oaken boughs surround and shut you in with a delectable solitude, where you may lie on the warm turf and read, or listen to the whispering leaves or the solemn sough of the forest; or a merry party of you may laugh and talk to your hearts’ content, glad as the blue sky above you; and vow that you will come and pitch your tents here for a fortnight,—a jocund company, like shakspeare’s immortal troop in the forest of arden. there never was scenery to realize more perfectly our idea of that forest. but go on: you enter on a wider expanse, on which a glorious oak stretches out its vast circumference of boughs that droop to the very ground, and form an ample tent, whose waving curtains fan you with the most grateful air. here you come upon the solitary foot-path that crosses the forest. you hear the light clap of a gate, and presently beneath the glimpsing trees, you see some rustic personage pursuing this path, and going unconsciously past you as you stand amongst the thickets—some old man with heavy pace, or village girl hurrying along as if those woods were still haunted by dubious things. but advance, and here is a wide prospect. the woodmen have cleared away the underwood; they have felled trees that were overtopped and ruined by their fellows; and their billets and fallen trunks, and split-up piles of blocks, are lying about in pictorial simplicity. on all sides, standing in their solemn steadfastness, you see huge, gnarled, strangely-coloured, and mossed oaks, some riven and laid bare, from summit to root, with the thunderbolts of past tempests. an immense tree is called the shamble-oak, being said to be the[386] one in which robin hood hung his slaughtered deer; but which was more probably used by the keepers for that purpose. by whomsoever it was so used, however, there still remain the hooks within its vast hollow. the old birches, without doubt some of the largest in england, shew like true satyrs of the woods—to the height of a man, being shagged, indented, and cross-hatched, as it were, into a most satyrly roughness, and contrast well with the higher bole, which rises clear and shining as silver to the boughs, which sweep down again to the ground in graceful lightness.
there is no end to the variety of their aspect and grouping. from the sylvan loveliness around you, you might fancy yourself in the outer wilderness of some armida’s garden. in spring, these woods are all alive with the cawing of jackdaws, which build in thousands in the hollow oaks; and as their bustle ceases as the evening falls, the nightingales are heard, and the owl and the dorhawk come soaring through the dusky air.
it is just the region to grow poetical in. i never walk these woods without forgetting for the time all the cares of towns and common life. it is to me a palpable introduction into the old world of poetry and romance. there is a spirit and feeling of the intellectual world that falls on you as the peculiar spirit of the place. it seems to me that if milton, shakspeare, spenser, and all those noble poets whose minds have moulded the better mind and character of this great country, were to revisit it at times, when they had looked round them on the agitations of city-life, to some such place would they come awhile to refresh themselves with their old delights, and to hold high converse on the present fashion and prospects of humanity. nothing seems so natural to these scenes, as to imagine their presence thus joined with the kindred spirits of a later day—scott, byron, shelley, coleridge, hogg, and the like;—their religion, their passions, their doubts, their philosophical mysticism all now blended down into a heavenly nobility and union of heart and desire; their favourite fancies and pursuits still dear to them as ever, but their intellectual vision widened to the embracement of the universe. i seem to see shelley and keats going hand in hand along some fair glade; the one pouring out all that soul of love which possessed him, which he wished had been the foundation of the christian religion instead of faith, and[387] who yet, blinded by the impetuosity of youth and indignation against the despotism of priestcraft, failed to see that this same love was the very life and glory of that system;—the other young poet still uttering aloud his longings for time! time! in which to achieve an eternity of fame:—
oh! for ten years, that i may do the deed
that my own soul has to itself decreed!
or lamb, speaking to those old friends of his earthly sojourn, of some fair creature met in the valleys of heaven:
she loves to walk
in the bright regions of empyreal light,
by the green pastures and the fragrant meads,
where the perpetual flowers of eden blow!
by crystal streams, and by the living waters,
along whose margin grows the wondrous tree
whose leaves shall heal the nations; underneath
whose holy shade a refuge shall be found
from pain and want, and all the ills that wait
on mortal life, from sin and death for ever.
but away, spirit of the woods! time urges; the world calls: and we are thrown once more into the midst of the stirring, rushing, unceasing stream of men. these woods and their fairyland dreams are but our luxuries; snatches of beauty and peace, caught as we go along the dusty path of duty. the town has engulphed us; a human hum is in our ears; and the thoughts and the cares of life are upon us once more.
