grants to nobles, unauthorised enclosures, etc., the forest lands belonging to the Crown were reduced to about a third of what they were at the Conquest, and a survey made in 1793 estimated the still uncultivated woods and wastes at twelve thousand acres only. From that date until the middle of the {62} nineteenth century the history of the once magnificent forest was one of constant encroachment, one beautiful tract after another having been sold and enclosed, for the officers of the Crown interpreted their duty to be to turn the land to as great a money profit as possible rather than to preserve it for the enjoyment of its owners or of the people to whom at various times certain rights had been granted. In 1850 some six thousand acres only were left, and in the next twenty years these were reduced to little more than half that amount. Fortunately, however, about this time public feeling began to be aroused on the subject, and thanks to the enlightened efforts of a number of influential men, amongst whom special recognition is due to the members of the Commons Preservation Society, the matter was brought before Parliament, and in 1882 five thousand five hundred acres were bought by the Corporation of London for the nation, including the woodlands beginning near Chingford and stretching northwards beyond Theydon Bois, parts of which are still much what they were when royal parties used to go forth to hunt from the palaces of Chigwell, New Hall, and Writtle, and when the post of Lord Warden of the Forest was eagerly sought by the great nobles, whilst a far less picturesque portion extends southwards to Wanstead Flats and Aldersbook Cemetery. Some two miles from Waltham Abbey begins what is known as the Sewardstone district, supposed to be named after a noted Saxon thane, that is dotted with picturesque hamlets, from one of which, known as Sewardstone proper, a pretty lane leads {63} to High Beech Green, a straggling village that once belonged to the Priory, with a good modern church, near to which is the loftiest point of the Forest: High Beech Hill, 759 feet high, that commands a very beautiful view. According to popular tradition, Dick Turpin used to lie in wait in a cave at the base of this hill for the travellers he intended to rob, undeterred by fear of betrayal at the hands of the landlords of the neighbouring Robin Hood and King's Oak inns, now represented by modern hotels, the latter named after the stump of a venerable oak known as Harold's--the very one that inspired _The Talking Oak_ of Tennyson, who wrote it and _Locksley Hall_ in a house near by, since pulled down; whilst in the still standing Fairmead House, then a private lunatic asylum, the half-crazy peasant poet John Clare, who lived in it from 1837 to 1841, composed some of his beautiful descriptions of the forest scenery.