Among sportsmen of these forest periods we must not omit to notice the Priors of the ancient Abbey of Wenlock. The heads of such wealthy establishments by no means confined themselves within the limits of the chapter-house. They were no mere cloistered monks, devoted to book and candle, but jolly livers, gaily dressed, and waited upon by well-appointed servants; like the Abbot of Buildwas, who had for his vassal the Lord of Buildwas Parva, who held land under him on condition that he and his wife should place the first dish on the abbot’s table on Christmas Day, and ride with him any whither within the four seas at the abbot’s charge. They had huntsmen and hounds, and one can imagine their sporting visitation rounds among their churches, the chanting of priests, the deep-mouthed baying of dogs, early matins, and the huntsman’s bugle horn harmoniously blending in the neighbourhood of the forest. Hugh Montgomery in his day gave to the abbey a tithe of the venison which he took in its woods, and in 1190 we find the Prior of Wenlock giving twenty merks to the king that he may “have the Wood of Shirlott to himself, exempt from view of foresters, and taken out of the Regard.” As we have already shown, the priors had a park at Madeley, they had one at Oxenbold, and they also had privileges over woods adjoining the forest of the Clees, where the Cliffords exercised rights ordinarily belonging to royal proprietors, and where their foresters carried things with such a high hand, and so frequently got into trouble with those of the priors, that the latter were glad to accept an arrangement, come to after much litigation in 1232, by which they were to have a tenth beast only of those taken in their own woods at Stoke and Ditton, and of those started in their demesne boscs, and taken elsewhere. These boscs appear to have been woodland patches connecting the long line of forest stretching along the flanks of the Clee Hills with that on the high ground of Shirlot and, as in the case of others even much further removed, their ownership was exceedingly limited. One of the complaints against Clifford’s foresters was, that they would not suffer the priors’ men to keep at Ditton Priors and Stoke St. Milburgh any dogs not _expedited_, or mutilated in their feet, nor pasture for their goats. [Picture: Chapter House of Wenlock Priory] Imbert, one of these priors, was chosen as one of the Commissioners for concluding a truce with David ap Llewellyn in July, 1244. He was subsequently heavily fined for trespasses for assarting, or grubbing up the roots of trees, in forest lands at Willey, Broseley, Coalbrookdale, Madeley, and other places, the charge for trespass amounting to the large sum of £126 13_s._ 4_d._