rdering on the Forest, requesting the attendance of the
clergymen, overseers, and landowners, for the purpose of discussing such
a plan. This courteous invitation was responded to by the parish
authorities of Westbury, Flaxley, Little Dean, Mitcheldean, Awre,
Staunton, Ruerdean, the Lea hamlet, Bicknor, and St. Briavel's, the Rev.
H. Berkin attending on the part of the Forest clergy, when the scheme of
the Commissioners was unanimously approved. By the evidence taken under
the second head, it appears that the parishes or tithings of Westbury,
Little Dean, Awre, Ruerdean, Bicknor, Lea hamlet, Breem, Clearwell,
Newland, Lydney, St. Briavel's, Newnham, Woolaston, and Purton, claimed
the right of Common of Pasture.

In the same month "the Free Miners of the Forest" presented to the
Commissioners an able memorial of their rights, in reply to that
preferred the year before by persons not free miners, but who were
proprietors and occupiers of coal and iron mines in the Forest; its
object being to prove that "foreigners possessing and working mines
therein was in direct violation of the rights and privileges of the free
miners, contrary to their customs and franchises, and are acts of
injustice and usurpation." They affirmed that the present usage of
foreigners possessing mines was not of long standing,--that it dated from
the discontinuance of the Mine Law Court in 1777, by which all such
intrusions were strictly checked and prevented; that this Court had been
in full operation upwards of 500 years, as they verily believed, and so
continued until the last 60 years, meeting periodically under the
presidency of the Constable appointed by the King, and attended by his
deputies and by the King's Gaveller; and that, if this Court were
re-established, and their rights and privileges restored to them, there
would be no difficulty in finding capital for the proper working of the
mines. The memorial was signed by 1,036 persons, professedly free
miners. But, as to this being the fact, a further memorial was presented
to the Commissioners on the 23rd of December, urging "that no person
should be considered a free miner whose birth from parents free miners
cannot be proved, in addition to their having been born in the Forest,
and worked in the mines a year and a day." According to such rule, the
original number of 1,036 would be reduced to 798. On the 24th of
December this year (1834) another memorial, coming from free miners in
th