Were there, then, no dwellings, no cultivated lands in Middlesex known by the name of Paddington, in 1086—the date of the Conqueror’s survey? Was Paddington at this period an uncultivated portion of the great Middlesex Forest; or did a few of the King’s cottagers live here, unnoticed and unknown, before this scrutiny discovered them? Were the broad acres, subsequently claimed by the monks of Westminster, accounted for in the territories of the neighbouring lords; or did they form but a portion of the home domain of the Convent? Was the village, and the land, known by any other name? Of all these possible suppositions, which is the most probable? To enter fully into a discussion of these questions would require a greater amount of antiquarian knowledge than I possess; and would occupy more space in this work than I can spare. To obtain an answer to the last question satisfactory to my own mind, it is true I have made some researches, and I will, as concisely as possible, convey to my readers the opinions at which I have arrived; detailing in this place only so many of the topographical facts as may be necessary to shew upon what foundations those opinions have been formed. We know, from Fitz Stephen, that an immense forest, “beautified with wood and groves,” but “full of the lairs and coverts of beasts and game, stags, bucks, boars, and wild bulls,” {6a} existed even in the twelfth century at no great distance from what then constituted London. Small portions only of this forest appear to have been, at any time, the property of the crown. It formed a part of the public land which was entrusted to the charge of the elected governors of the people. In it the citizens had free right of chase, preserved by many royal charters: it was disafforested by Henry the third in 1218. {6b} And during the Saxon period it would have been no difficult matter to have obtained a settlement even in the most desirable parts of it. To shew the extent of this forest in Middlesex, and the paucity of fixed inhabitants in it, when for the purposes of government, families arranged themselves into tens, and hundreds, we have only to remember that the Hundred of Ossulston occupied nearly half the county; although it included both London and Westminster. The Fleete, the Tybourn, and the Brent, were the three notable streams which carried the waters from the hills north of the Thames through this forest to the great recipient of them all. And it is probable that the Saxons early settled on the elevated banks of these streams, finding there a more healthful and safer retreat than could be found on the banks of “the silent highway” which was so frequently traversed by the Danes.