[Picture: Needle’s Eye] That there were, however, poachers upon the king’s preserves appears from a criminal prosecution recorded on the Forest Roll of 1209, to the effect that four of the county sergeants found venison in the house of Hugh le Scot, who took asylum in a church, and, refusing to quit, “there lived a month,” but afterwards “escaped in woman’s clothes.” Certain sales of forest land made by Henry II. near the Wrekin, and entered on the Forest Roll of 1180, together with the assessments and perambulations of later periods, afford some idea of the extent of this forest, which, from the Severn and the limits of Shrewsbury, swept round by Tibberton and Chetwynd to the east, and included Lilleshall, St. George’s, Dawley, Shifnal, Kemberton, and Madeley on the south. From the “Survey of Shropshire Forests” in 1235, it appears that the following woods were subject to its jurisdiction: Leegomery, Wrockwardine Wood, Eyton-on-the-Weald Moors, Lilleshall, Sheriffhales, the Lizard, Stirchley, and Great Dawley. A later perambulation fixed the bounds of the royal preserve, or Haye of Wellington, in which two burnings of lime for the use of the crown are recorded, as well as the fact that three hundred oak-trees were consumed in the operation. Hugh Forester, and Robert the Forester, are spoken of as tenants of the crown in connection with this Haye; and it is an interesting coincidence that the land originally granted by one of the Norman earls, or by King Henry I., for the custody of this Haye, which included what is now called Hay Gate, is still in possession of the present noble owner of Willey. It seems singular, however, that in the “Arundel Rolls” of 1255, it should be described as a _pourpresture_, for which eighteen pence per acre was paid to the king, as being held by the said Robert Forester towards the custody of the Wellington Haia. [Picture: Deer and young] Among the perquisites which the said Robert Forester was allowed, as Keeper of the Haye, all dead wood and windfalls are mentioned, unless more than five oak-trees were blown down at a time, in which case they went to the king. The Haye is spoken of here as an “imparkment,” which agrees with the descriptions of Chaucer and other old writers, who speak of a Haia as a place paled in, or enclosed, into which deer or other game were driven, as they now drive deer in North America, or elephants in India, and of grants of land made to those whose especial duty it was to drive the deer with their troop of followers from all parts of a wide circle into such enclosure for slaughter. The following description of deer-hunting in the seventeenth century by Taylor, the Water Poet, as he is called, will enable us to understand the plan pursued by the Norman sportsmen:—