600
Bream 300
Le Bailey 200
Staunton 220
Ruerdean 500
Bicknor 300
-----
Total 6,090

At the close of the century, the Forest, as now bounded, comprised 589
houses, which in 1803 had increased to 696, the number of free miners
being then 662. Since that time the inhabitants of the Forest have gone
on increasing as follows:--

In 1821 they were 5,525
In 1831 ,, 7,014
In 1841 ,, 10,674
In 1851 ,, 13,252

of whom about 1,789 have the right of voting for Members of Parliament.
The annual value of property existing in the Forest, not belonging to the
Crown, was estimated in 1849 at 13,603 pounds 14s. 2d., and in 1856 at
18,492 pounds 17s. 7d.

CHAPTER X.

Churches and schools--Religious provisions before the
Reformation--Rev. P. M. Procter, Vicar of Newland, lectures in Thomas
Morgan's cottage--The erection of a place for worship proposed--Rev.
H. Berkin opens a Sunday-school--Mr. Procter uses his chapel
schoolroom--Mr. Berkin lectures in the Foresters' cottages--Builds
Holy Trinity Church (1817)--His assiduous labours and death in
1847--Christ Church, Berry Hill--Mr. Procter's death--His
successors--Rev. H. Poole builds St. Paul's, Park End, and
schoolrooms--Rev. J. J. Ebsworth--St. John's, Cinderford, consecrated
1844--Lydbrook Church consecrated 1851--Government aid to the
churches and schools.

Previous to the Reformation, care seems to have been taken to provide the
population of the Forest with the means of religious worship. The border
churches of Mitcheldean and Newland were far larger than the people
residing in their immediate neighbourhood required; and there were
others, of which the memorials only remain in the names of "Chapel Hill"
and "Church Hill," the former in the parish of English Bicknor, and the
latter at Park End. This last was connected apparently with Ruerdean, if
we may judge from the "Churchway" which ran in that direction and gave
the name to an adjacent colliery. The "Laws and Customes" of the free
miners, dating as far back certainly as the year 1300, show that the
services of the Church were then generally known--the King's Gaveller
being therein dire