te clear that great uncertainty and frequent losses inevitably
ensued." Moreover, the receipts from mines and minerals, by the Crown,
upon the average of the six preceding years, were only 826 pounds 2s.
10.5d.

The important Act by which these difficulties were to be removed, under
the auspices of the three Commissioners above named, was framed in
accordance with the suggestion thrown out in the fourth Report of the
Dean Forest Commissioners, viz., that all subsisting mine-works should be
released by compensation to the Crown, and the whole relet on a
well-defined plan to such free miners as might make application for the
same. The Act (1 and 2 Vict. cap. 43) provides that all male persons
born and abiding within the hundred of St. Briavel's, being upwards of
twenty-one years of age and having worked a year and a day in a coal or
iron mine or stone-quarry within the said hundred, should alone have the
right to hold or dispose of such works, a register of all such persons
being kept as "free miners." It suppressed all claims to pit timber,
with all "customs," and assigned to the Commissioners under the Act the
duty of fixing rents and royalties for twenty-one years, and to the
gaveller power to limit and regulate as well as to enter and survey all
works which might be re-awarded or galed. No engines were to be erected
nearer than sixty yards to any enclosure, within which only air-shafts
might be opened, and all unnecessary buildings were to be removed.

On the 16th of August, 1838, the annual Report of the Commissioners of
Woods was issued, signed by Lord Duncannon, B. C. Stephenson and A.
Milne, Esqrs. It mentions that a piece of land in the parish of English
Bicknor had been granted for school purposes, and that the Severn and Wye
Tramway Company obtained the licence of the Crown to lay down a branch
from Brook Hall Ditches to Foxes Bridge.

The only circumstance requiring notice in the following year is the
decease of the second Commissioner of Woods, Sir B. C. Stephenson, who
had long held the office, and he was succeeded by the Honourable Charles
Gore.

The next annual Report bears date 29th July, 1840, and contains nothing
calling for special notice.

The year 1841 is particularly important in the history of the Forest from
its being the date of the present coal and iron mine awards, under the
authority of the Mining Commissioners, the former being signed on the 8th
of March, and the latter on the 20th