“Where now the Counties of Shropshire, Staffordshire, and Worcestershire converge, there was once a vast region of Forest, not confined to one bank of a succession of lakes and marshes which we now know as the Valley of the Severn, but stretching away for miles eastward and westward. The Severn itself was in one place a land-locked and sluggish stream; in another a series of rivulets struggling on, with no concentrated force, amid the various impediments which uncontrolled nature had crowded on its course. Its fits of wintry and swollen fury, like human passions, re-acted upon themselves; for the giant oak, which to-day was torn from its bank and plunged in the torrent, lay on the morrow athwart the subsiding stream, an additional element of its future bondage. “The region, whose chief features I thus imagine, seems to have been known to the Britons as _Coed_, or forest—the forest, that is, _par excellence_ of this part of England. “When we read of the Forests of Morf, Kinver, and Wyre, we get notions of extent which must be added one to the other before we can realize any idea of the more ancient _Coed_; for the _Coed_ was the parent of the other three, and they perhaps not its only constituents. “I am now to speak of Morf Forest more particularly, and, though I cannot indicate the precise time at which it was separated from its associates, we shall not err in ascribing the change to an increasing population, and the Saxon devotion to agriculture. “In the earliest stage of its self-existence, Morf Forest can be ascertained to have been at least eight miles in length, while its greatest width was more problematically about six. Its known, because afterwards maintained, northern boundary rested upon the Worf, for some miles before that stream falls into the Severn. Its south-eastern extremity is determined by its name, taken from the Staffordshire Village of Morf, where commenced that interval which gradual change had interposed between the Forests of Morf and Kinver. “By still further compression of its southern boundaries, and by large clearances within its area, Morf Forest had, at the Norman Conquest, been altered both in extent and character. But the Forest ground, though alternated with cornfields and villages, was still very great, and very great it remained for more than two centuries afterwards.” * * * * * The final perambulation of this Forest was made in the reign of Edward I, A.D., 1300; and it will be a matter of interest to those who know the locality, to trace its ancient boundaries, as given in the document, which was published after the survey was made. It is furnished by Mr. Eyton in p. 219, and is as follows:—