scarcely discoverable.
Every mining appurtenance is retained, only somewhat altered in shape,
and that, perhaps, not for the better, be it cap, "bellis," or general
attire. Only the beard is absent, but then there are the shoes.

[Picture: Forest of Dean Iron Miners ready for work]

On several occasions they conferred their freedom on the leading gentry
of the neighbourhood. By their orders they also sanctioned the sinking
of _pits_, as distinguished from _levels_, extending the interval between
mine and mine from "within so much space that ye miner may stand and cast
ridding and stones soe farr from him with a bale as the manner is," to
five hundred yards. At the present time the deputy gaveller, Mr. T.
Forster Brown, is the resident official under the Commissioner in charge
of Her Majesty's Woods, &c., and he, with his respected predecessor, have
at all times most obligingly facilitated the author's inquiries by giving
the desired information. It was during the deputy gavellership of the
late Mr. John Atkinson at Coleford that the writer chanced to meet with
the original transcript, here presented to the reader, of the "Book of
Dennis." The first printing and publication of it took place in 1687, by
William Cooper, at the Pelican, in Little Britain, and it has been
frequently but imperfectly reprinted.

Finding on examination that the reign of the first of the Edwards, and
not the third, was the period to which it assigned the confirmation of
the Forest of Dean Mine Laws, and that it contained many other
inaccuracies, he determined to prepare, in accordance with the valued
suggestion of Mr. Smirke, Judge of the Stannaries of Cornwall, a true
copy of so ancient and curious a document.

From the note which is appended to it, the existing MS. is evidently the
only authentic copy of the original "parchment roll," out of which it was
transcribed by the gaveller, Richard Morse, A.D. 1673, of the penmanship
of which period it is a good specimen.

It seems to be a presentment of the Court of Mine Law, duly signed by the
jury of forty-eight free miners. Although its early date, and one or two
forms of expression, may seem to indicate that it was first of all
written in Latin, yet so many of its words and phrases, together with its
concluding signatures, are so thoroughly old English, as to show that it
was most probably composed in our own language. There are no paragraphs
nor punctuations.

In charact