incurred in that
cause a legal discharge be taken. Now the ton of 21 cwt. was fixed
as a weight of coal, to be sold for 5s. to an inhabitant of the
hundred, or for 6s. to foreigners; and every pit was to be provided
with scales. Upwards of twenty of the forty-eight miners who formed
the jury at this court put their names to the above verdict, the
remainder being marksmen.

In the year 1705, Edward Wilcox, Esq., Surveyor-General to the Royal
Forests, having carefully examined the condition of the woods in the
Forest of Dean, stated that he found them very full of young trees, of
which two thirds were beech, overtopping the oaks, to their injury; and
he recommended that one sixteenth part, or about 700 acres, should be
annually cleared and fenced in, which would yield a profit to the Crown
of 3,500 pounds a year, and leave the standard oaks and beech to grow to
perfection. Lord Treasurer Godolphin consented to this proposal, and
granted a warrant for carrying it into execution; but it was petitioned
against by those who claimed a right of common, whose free-pasturage
would thereby be lessened; at the same time, however, others were
desirous that it might take effect, as they would get a living by cutting
the underwood, and preparing it for the furnaces. At length on the 4th
of July, 1707, the Attorney-General, Sir Simon Harcourt, decided--that
"no claim or right of common could prevent the enclosing, keeping in
severalty, or improving, as her Majesty should direct, the 11,000 acres
mentioned in the Act of 20 Charles II., and preserving the same as a
nursery of wood and timber only."

Another event of this year was the holding a Court of Mine Law, on the
1st of July, at Mitcheldean, but afterwards by adjournment at Coleford,
before George Bond and Roynon Jones, Esqrs., deputies.

It confirmed the directions of a former court of forty-eight, that
the law-papers produced at the late suit in the Court of Exchequer,
with all the other records of the Mine Law Court, be collected
forthwith, and consigned to the care of Francis Wyndham, Esq.; and
that the law debts then incurred be at length paid, out of a 1s. rate
upon every miner and mine-horse. The 20s. penalty for leaving pits
unfenced was also reimposed. This "Order" bears the genuine
signatures of nineteen out of the forty-eight jurymen, the rest
merely making their marks.

In the next year, A.D. 1708, M