or
property to that amount, or imprisonment in St. Briavel's Castle for
a year, to the perpetrator or any cognizant thereof. From this it
seems perfectly plain that the free miner regarded the carrying of
coal as much a part of his profession as getting it, and therefore
equally requiring protection. The "Order" proceeds to direct that in
every suit before the Mine-Law Court the plaintiff and defendant were
to pay 6d. to the Clerk for entering the same, which was to form his
salary. The rights of free-minership were conferred upon the
Honourable Thomas Gage, Christopher Bond the younger, Esq., Thomas
Crawley, Esq., James Rooke, Esq., Thomas James, Gent., Thomas Barron
the younger, Gent., Thomas Marshall, Yeoman. John Wade was to be
made "free" on his working a year and a day in the mine; and making
it a rule that a foreigner's son, being born in the Hundred, and
seeking to become a free miner, was to serve by indenture an
apprenticeship of seven years. The above "Order" has only
twenty-three marks attached to it, more than half the jury signing
their own names.

Proceeding to the date and objects of the next "Order" of the same Court,
we find that it had been adjourned to the 2nd March, 1741, at the Speech
House, before Edward Tomkins Machen, Esq., Deputy. It commences by
explaining the terms "above" and "beneath the wood" to be two ancient
divisions of the Forest, "beginning at the river Wye at Lydbrook, where
the brooke there leading from the forges falls into the said river, and
so up the said brooke or stream unto a place in the said Forest called
Moyery Stock, and from thence along a Wayn-way at the bottom of a place
called the Salley Vallett, and so along the same way between the two old
enclosures that did belong to Ruardean and Little Dean Walks unto
Cannop's Brooke, and down the said brooke to Cannop's Bridge; and from
thence along the road or highway to the Speech-house, and from thence
along the said highway to Foxe's Bridge, and from thence down Blackpool
Brooke to Blakeney."

It is worthy of remark, that the same boundary line, with only a trifling
difference, defines the two townships of East and West Dean, into which
the Forest is now divided for the purposes of the Poor Law Amendment Act.
The connexion of this division with the Court of Mine Law consisted
simply in this, that the attendance of a free miner on the jury was
regula