the custody of the Gablewood to Henry Bream.

Edward VI. farmed the Forest to Sir Anthony Kingston. How far the Forest
population were interested in the stirring events of the Reformation, we
are, unfortunately, left to conjecture; but the suppression of the
adjacent Abbeys of Tintern and Flaxley, with their large possessions,
must have brought the changes of the period visibly home to them.

The reign of Elizabeth brings us to the date of an incident more
generally notorious perhaps than any other in the history of Dean Forest,
viz. its intended destruction by the Spanish Armada. Evelyn in his
'Sylva' thus mentions it:--"I have heard that in the great expedition of
1588 it was expressly enjoined the Spanish Armada that if, when landed,
they should not be able to subdue our nation and make good their
conquest, they should yet be sure not to leave a tree standing in the
Forest of Dean." Were it not that he particularly states that he had
"heard" the report, we should conclude that he obtained his information
from Fuller's 'Worthies,' published two years previously, where it is
mentioned with this only difference, that "a Spanish ambassador was to
get it done by private practices and cunning contrivances." Fuller had
probably read this account in 'Samuel Hartlib, his Legacy of Husbandry,'
published in 1655, where, speaking of the deficiency of woods at that
time, he writes--"the State hath done very well to pull down divers
iron-works in the Forest of Dean, that the timber might be preserved for
shipping, which is accounted the toughest in England, and, when it is
dry, as hard as iron. The common people did use to say that in Queen
Elizabeth's days the Spaniards sent an ambassador purposely to get this
wood destroyed."

As Mr. Evelyn writes that he "heard" what he states of the matter, Mr.
Secretary Pepys was probably his informant, who was told it by his friend
Sir John Winter, who again heard it from his grandfather, Sir William
Winter, vice-admiral of Elizabeth's fleet, but kinsman to Thomas Winter
of Huddington, who at the close of this reign was constantly aiding the
Spanish Romanists in their intrigues here, and eventually took part in
the Gunpowder Plot. Such tradition is highly to the credit of the Forest
timber of those days, if not to the iron as well. Both must have been
renowned for supplying an important portion of the materials used in the
Royal dockyards, which were at this time much enlarged, an