The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1854-10-12
WASHINGTON, d. C..
For the National Era.
SHERWOOD FOREST,
WAGER BY BATTLE.

CkNTU6Y.
BY HENRY WILLIAM HERBERT.
CHAP. L
The Forest.
He rode half q mile tho way;
He saw no light that came Of day;
Then came he to a river broad,
Never man over such one rode;
Within he saw place Of green,
Such one had he never erst seen.
EarIy Met7icaI R0maunts. Guy Of Warsctck.
In the latter part of the twelfth century
when, in the reign of Henry Ii, fourth success
Or of the Conqueror, and grandson of the first
prince of that name, known as Beauclerc-the
condition of the vanquished Saxons had begun
in some sort to amend, though no fusion of the
races had as yet commenced, and tranquility
was partially restored to England, the greater
ps-t of the northern counties, from the Trent
10 tie mouths of Tyne and Solway, were little
better than an unbroken chase or forest with
the exception of the 6efs of few great barons,
or the territories of e few cities and free Dor
ough towns; and thence, northward to the
Scottish frontier, all was a rude and painless
desert Of morasses, moors, and mountains, I'M
trodden save by the foot of the prosecuted Saxon
outlaw.
In the West and North Rulings of the great
and important Shire of York, there were, it is
true, already few towns Of more than grow
ing Importance; several of which had been
originally the sites, or had grown up in the
vicinity and under the shelter, of Roman
Stative contemporaries; whereof not few of
them have retained the evidence in their COM
mon termination, caster, while others yet retain
tie more modern Saxon appellations. OF these
two classes, Doncaster, Pontefract, Rotterdam,
Sheffield, Ripon, may be taken as examples,
which were even then hourishing, and, for the
times even opulent manufacturing boroughs,
while the vastly larger and more wealthy COM
mercial places which have since sprung up,
mushroom-like, around them, had then neither
hearths nor homes, names nor existence.
In addition to these many great lords and
uoSerful barops already possessed vast de-
mesnes and manors, and had erected almost
royal fortalices, the venerable ruins of which
still bear evidence to the power and the mar
tai spirit Of the Norman lords of England; and
even more majestic and more richly endowed
Institutions Of the church, such as Fountains,
Jorysulx, and Bolton Abbsyes still the wonder
and reproacl of modern architecture, and the
admiration C modern artists, had created
around themselves garden-like GASES among
the green glad,s and grassy aisles of the i'm
memorial British forests; while, emuating the
example of thei, feudal or clerical superiors,
many a military tenant, many e gray-frocked
frar, had reared bis towor Of strength, or built
his lonely cell, lpon some moat-surrounded
mount, or in some bosky dingle Of the wood.
In the East hiding all to the north of the
ancient city of the Shire, even then famous for
It's Minister and us castle, even then the zee
and palace of the second archbishop of the
realm was wilder yet ruder and more unoivil-
lied. Even to this day, it is, comparatively
speaking, bleak ana barren region, over
swept by tho cold gtsts from the German
ocean, Astounding moe in black and stormy
wolds than in the cheerful green of copse or
wildwood, rejoicing little in pasture, less in
tillage, and boasting # nothing superior to the
dull market towns Il the interior, and the
small fishing villages pested among the crag'
Of lite iron coast.
Most pitilessly had ibis district been ravaged
by the COnqueror and his immediate successor,
after its first desperate and protracted resist
ance to the arms Of the Norman; after the
Saxon hope of England fell, to arise no more,
upon the bloody field of Hastings; and after
each one of the fierce Northern risings
The people we're Of the hard, old, stubborn,
Danish stock, more pertinacious, even, and
more stubborn, than the enduring Saxon, but
with dash of hotter and more daring spirit
than belonged to their slower and more slug
gish brethren
These men would not yield, could not be
subdued by the iron -sheathed cavalry of the
intrusive kings. They were destroyed by them,
the lands swept bare,* the buildings burned
the churches desecrated. Manors, which under
the native rule of the Confessor had easily
yielded sixty shillings of annual rent, without
distress to their occupants, scarcely paid five 10
their foreign lords; and estates, which under
the ancient rule opulently furnished forth q
living to twof English gentlemen of rank with
BETTING households, now barely supported two
miserable Saxon cultivators slaves of the soil
paying their foreign lords, with the blood OF
their hands and the sweat of their brows,
scarcely the twelfth part of the revenue drawn
from them by the old proprietors.
When, in subsequent instruction, the Nor
man king again marched northward, in full
resolve TO carry bis oonquering arms to the
frontiers of Scotland, and, sustained by his f.
rocious energy, did actually force his way
through the misty moorlands and mountainous
mld-regions of Durham, Northumberland, and
Wessmoroland, he had to traverse about sixty
miles Of country, once not the least fertile OF
his newly-eonquered realm in which his mail.
clad men-at-arms saw neither green leaves on
the trees, nor green crops in the field; for the
axe and the torch had done their work, not
Eeglgently; passed neither standing roof nor
burning hearth; encountered neither human
Beng nor cattle of the field only the wolves
Rhich had become 30 numerous from desuetude
10 the sight of man, that they scarce cared to
lily before the clash and clsng of the marching
squadrons.
To the northward and northwestward, vet OF
Yorkshire, including what are now Lancashire
WeStmoreland, Northumberland, and Cumber-
land, though the Conqueror, In his first irresist-
ible prosecution of red-handed victory, had
marched and countermarched across them
there was, even at tho time of my narrative
when nearly century had fled, little if any.
thing of permanent progress or civilization, be.
yond the establishment of a few feudal holds
and border fortresses each with its petty ham
let clustered beneath its shelter The marches
indeed, of Lancashire toward its southern ex
tremity, were in some degree permanently set
tied by military colonists; in not o few in
stances composed of Flemings, as were the
WEIGH frontiers of the neighboring province O
Cheshire, planted there to check the inroads o
the still unconquered Cymri, to the protection
OF whose mountains, and late-preserved inde
pendence, their whilom enemies, the now per
secuted Saxons, had fled in their extremity.
1t is from these industrious artisans, then tn,
seorn of the high-born men-at-arms, that tn,
trade had its origin, which has filed the bleal
moors, and every torrent gorge of Lancaster
and Western York, with teeming population
and manufacturing opulence, such as, else
where, the wide earth has not witnessed. Ever
at the time of which write, the clack of thei
fulling mills, the click of their looms. and TIL
din of their trip-hammers, resounded bv th
side of many lonely Cheshire stream: bu
all to the north and westward, where the wild
est hillsides and most forbidding glens are nov