Sherwood Forest

Sherwood Forest is a dry, level, densely wooded place in Nottinghamshire, encountered during the Empress and the Duchess’s soul’s journey to visit the Duke of Newcastle. The Empress admires its unusual concentration of trees, while the Duchess’s account of the English Civil Wars reveals the losses that have thinned the surrounding landscape and impoverished her husband.

Setting and Description

Traveling in their subtle aerial vehicles, the Empress and the Duchess’s soul pass through Sherwood Forest on their way to Nottinghamshire, where the Duke resides. The Empress delights in the forest’s flat, dry ground and its pleasantness in both winter and summer: it is neither especially muddy nor dusty. The journey gives the forest a practical as well as picturesque character, a place made comfortable to cross in every season.

The Empress is struck by how much woodland occupies so small an area. She contrasts the land with the sea, where, she observes, ships seem to provide more wood than the country itself. That comparison turns a passing impression into a question about the state of the landscape and the history behind its appearance.

The Civil Wars and the Changed Landscape

The Duchess explains that a long civil war in England destroyed many of the finest timber trees as well as principal palaces. Her husband, the Duke of Newcastle, lost half his woods, along with houses, land, and movable goods; the loss to his personal estate amounted to more than half a million pounds. The forest’s present abundance is therefore not evidence that the wider devastation was slight: it sits within a country whose trees and buildings have been damaged by war.

Hearing of the Duke’s losses, the Empress wishes that he could have some of the gold from the Blazing-World to repair them. The Duchess thanks her for the kind intention but observes that wishes cannot restore what was ruined. She adds that God has given her husband patience with his misfortunes, shifting the conversation from the Empress’s imagined material remedy to the endurance with which the Duke bears his losses.

Place in the Journey

Sherwood Forest leads the travelers to Welbeck, the Duke’s residence, which is closely surrounded by woodland. The Empress again remarks on the amount of wood concentrated in a small compass, linking her first impression of the forest to the setting of the Duke’s home. Their arrival brings the description of the landscape into contact with the household and estate losses the Duchess has just recounted.

The forest thus marks a transition from observation to historical explanation. Its pleasant, traversable terrain briefly offers the Empress delight, but the Duchess’s account makes woodland also a record of civil conflict and private ruin. In the scene, Sherwood is not merely scenery: the state of its trees helps frame the material consequences of war as the travelers approach the Duke’s diminished estate.