In the year 1275 two questions respecting church property in the county of Worcester came under the decision of trial by combat: one on June 25th, in Hardwick Meadow, for the church of Tenbury, which was adjusted, after all, without duel, in favour of the Abbot of Lyra; a second, on July 9th, was for the bailiwick of Hembury (Hanbury?) and here the Bishop of Worcester's champion vanquished the champion of Philip de Stok. The Bishop of Hereford likewise kept a champion in his suite, who received regular wages; and when Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, laid claim to the chase on the western slopes of the Malvern range, the Bishop's representative was prepared to do battle in the lists if need were; but a jury, composed of men drawn from the counties of Worcester and Hereford, decided in favour of the church, and a trench of separation between the two possessions was made by the disappointed Earl along the ridge of the hill, where it remains a memorial of the contest to the present day. Foresters were in general an impudent and abandoned race. Those of Feckenham, where the king had a palace or hunting seat, incurred his particular displeasure by their depredations. He dealt summarily with them in the spring of 1289-90, when he progressed there, by committing some of them to prison, and some he fined. On April 2nd he admitted all the latter to bail to appear at Woodstock by the 5th of that month, in Easter week, and there he fixed their fines. In the following autumn they insulted the Prior of Worcester, near Herforton (Harvington?) as he was travelling along the road, robbed his servants of their bows and arrows, and sounded their horns on all sides against him. But the monk of Worcester who narrates this circumstance does not tell us what may be learned elsewhere, and was perhaps one cause of the insult, that his own Prior had been a trespasser in the said forest, and was fined for it. The Bishop of Worcester also was a trespasser, and paid 500 while the Prior paid 200 marks. (See further account of this in vol. iii, p. 149, of the "Rambler in Worcestershire.") In case of trespass by hunting or border hostility the foresters and others used to shout and blow their horns, to bring in the country to their aid. Hence the northern border tenure of cornage.