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Woodland
(12/15)
High hills surround the valley,
encircling it like a crown.
These are clothed by trees of various sorts and maintain in
pleasant retreats the privacy of the vale, providing for the
monks a kind of second paradise of wooded delight. (37)
Walter Daniel’s lyrical description of Rievaulx in the twelfth
century suggests that the abbey precinct was at this time surrounded
by woodland. Woodland afforded shelter and privacy, but also provided
valuable resources including charcoal for burning in the forges,
as well as building materials such as timber and thatch. It could
also be used as pasturage for animals, particularly pigs, which
could graze on acorns and beech nuts here. In the late twelfth
century, Bernard de Balliol gave the monks pasture rights in his
forests at Teesdale and Westerdale. His grant included the right
to keep sixty brood mares in the forest of Teesdale and also to
make lodges and folds in both places. The abbey had also at this
time grazing rights in the forest of Helmsley; thirteenth-century
acquisitions included grazing rights in Swaledale.
Charters and court cases shed considerable
light on the resources afforded by forests and the activities that
went on therein. A
particularly interesting example is the dispute, 1231/2, between
Abbot Roger of Rievaulx and the abbey’s patron, William
Ros,
regarding land in Griff and Tilleston, common pasture and wood
in Hamelak and Pockele.(38) The
argument centred on William’s
assertion that he had a forest in the woods here; accordingly,
he had his foresters keep wild beasts in the woods and lands belonging
to the abbot, within the bounds of nine carucates. Abbot Roger
argued that the presence of William’s foresters had hindered
him from having common of herbage and mast or
his cattle, in the woods of Hamelak and Pockele, as well as common
of brushwood and
timber; more importantly, William’s actions were contrary
to the charter of his father, Robert of Ros.
Monasteries that had a lot of woodland might appoint a forester to oversee
the work. Some foresters were monks, some lay-brothers. A lay-brother
who was a forester of Rievaulx was beaten up in 1285 when the abbot’s
house was broken into at Harlsey.
[Williams, The Cistercians in the Early Middle Ages, p. 318; Burton, ‘Estates
and economy’, p. 61.]
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This dispute resulted
in lengthy legislative proceedings, but William eventually agreed
to deforest these lands and not to demand by right a forest. William
made a number of other concessions to the abbot, which provide
further information about daily life in the forest, and how the
woodland was utilised. William agreed that he should not take birds
nesting or put keepers or foresters within the said nine carucates
and assart, but that the
abbot and his successors should have their own keepers and foresters
to keep the woods and lands there; he
conceded that the community could take wild beasts and all sorts
of game with their dogs and greyhounds, and also their bows and
arrows, unhindered by either him or his heirs. Furthermore, William
granted the abbot common of herbage, mast,
brushwood and timber in all the woods and holdings of Hamelak and
Pockele except in
the old park east of Hamelak and another to the west, called ‘le
Haye’, and wood called Plocwude; whilst Rievaulx might not
have any common there the community might take all the brushwood
and timber it required and also for its beasts and flocks, except
goats. The monks were also to have free way for their men, herds
and carts. The abbot, in return, gave William 200m silver.
The case between the abbot of Rievaulx and Gilbert de Gaunt in
1252, which was decided in the abbot’s favour, is equally
incisive and provides an unusually vivid insight to the sights
and sounds of the medieval forest. The terms of this agreement
stipulated that in Gilbert’s forest of Swaledale, the abbot
should have dogs, horns and all necessities for his house, hedges,
hearths, folds and lodges and other easements which he ought and
used to have (i.e. by custom – by right).(39) <back> <next>
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