When William the Conqueror invaded Britain in 1066, he brought the language and customs of the Norman aristocracy with him. The European kings had a long history of claiming parts of their territory for their own sporting pleasure. Commoners living within these areas were forbidden from hunting the animals and exploiting the vegetation. With the arrival of the Norman invaders, large tracts of England were annexed for this purpose, and they were known as Royal Forests. There were stiff penalties, including mutilation and death, for any commoner who dared to break the harsh Forest Law.
With each successive king, the Crown’s appetite for forested land increased, and ever larger tracts were appropriated as Royal Forest. This was partly due to the fact that the king could generate a significant income from them by allowing the forest to be used by people other than the king, for a fee. By the time of King John, the whole of Devon was a Royal Forest. With so much land Forested, the common man was hard-pressed when it came to gathering wood for cooking, heating and commerce, and for raising his livestock.
During King John’s reign, a combination of unapproved tax rises, lost territories in France and dispute with the Pope had all made him unpopular at home with his barons, who began to conspire against him. In 1215 they combined forces and captured London, forcing the king to sign the Magna Carta. The Magna Carta severely limited the King’s authority, and bound the King to the law of the land, rather than allowing him to just do as he pleased. An amendment to the Magna Carta, the Charter of the Forests, was signed by the new king, Henry III, in 1217. This charter meant that the Royal Forests could now be used by commoners for some purposes, and that the death penalty for stealing venison was repealed.
The Charter of the Forests also required that the Royal Forests should be limited in area to the size they had been at the coronation of King Henry II, which would undo the acquisitions of Kings Henry II, Richard and John. In Devon, this meant that the whole county would be freed, except for the Forests of Exmoor and Dartmoor.
In 1239, Henry III gave the Forest of Dartmoor to his brother Richard, Earl of Cornwall. This exposed a problem: the boundaries of Dartmoor Forest had never been explicitly confirmed. Four local landowning knights came into dispute with the King as to which lands were theirs and which belonged to the Crown. In order to resolve this dispute, on 24th June 1240, Henry III passed down a writ to the sheriff of Devon to summon a jury of twelve knights to walk around, or perambulate, the supposed boundary of the Forest, and confirm its limits. This perambulation was completed in July of the same year.
There exists a copy of the return of the perambulation which, as was normal for legal documents of the time, was written in Latin. The names of the boundary marks were written in a Latin phonetic transcription of the local names. Unfortunately, over the years the local names have changed, and it is no longer certain which modern landmark names correspond to those in the medieval documents. There is a general agreement, however, that the markers used in this series are close to the originals of 1240.
The Perambulation of the Forest of Dartmoor has left us with possibly Dartmoor’s greatest walk, a trail of around fifty miles across some of the moor’s most remote and beautiful terrain, and I hope that you enjoy walking this ancient route as much as I have. Some caches in the series had already been placed by other cachers at the boundary markers, and this series has been set to fill in the remainder and also to provide waymarks between the markers. I am very grateful to ELDitton, Dartmoor Dave, Poole Dolphins and skaterdod for allowing me to place clues in some of their caches. I am also deeply indebted to ELDitton for his assistance with helping me with the historical aspects of this cache.
Now, on to the bonus…
This cache is not at the above co-ordinates. To locate it you must collect the clues from all of the caches in this series. In the logbook of each one, and on a laminated card, is an adjustment, such as N +0.437. This means you have to add 0.437 to the northing of this cache’s posted co-ordinates. W -0.333 means you must subtract 0.333 from the westing of this cache. When you have all the adjustments, add them all to this cache’s co-ordinates and you will have its location.
The checksum for the final co-ordinates of this cache is 51.
The caches are as follows: