278 Selwood Forest. 
It puzzled me for some little time to find out who he was, because 
he does not find a place in Butler’s “ Lives of the Saints.” The 
proper name was Adelgar, or Athelgar, and he was one of the 
earliest Bishops of Crediton, in Devonshire. I found from an old 
record at Longleat that he was lord of the manor where the farm 
now is, then called Langley, and that he gave it to the Abbey of 
Cirencester—to which, as I have mentioned, the rectory and tithes 
of Frome belonged—on condition of their building a chapel at 
Langley and endowing one or more chaplains. Leland mentions this 
chapel, and says that the bones of St. Algar were preserved there, 
and that the people used to make pilgrimages to it and used to pull 
the chapel bell-rope with their teeth. Without wishing to make 
any remark upon the abuses and silly practices which, through long 
lapse of time, had crept into the then dominant religion, it is only 
just and fair to the Roman Catholics to say that whilst their religion 
was dominant they did not neglect to provide means of civilising 
by religious instruction, even in the most remote and out-of-the-way 
places. Some years ago I printed in the Wiltshire Magazine an 
account of a great number of these chapels, which were all put 
down at the Reformation. But what took their place? Fora long 
time nothing, so that the inhabitants of these forests and lonely 
places were left to their own wild and independent way, without 
even any outward emblem of religion, any building to remind them 
of God or to put serious and solemn thoughts before them. So 
lawless had they become that the first Lord Weymouth, with the 
hope of reform, built a Church in the Woodlands, and endowed a 
clergyman. Since that time another chapel has been erected at 
Gaer Hill, and those two may be considered as now supplying what 
old St. Algar in his day supplied. to the foresters of Selwood, 
Another blank of one hundred years, and we come to the days of 
King Alfred, who must have known his way about Selwood very 
familiarly. There are two particular points about his history in 
which his name, rightly or wrongly, has been often connected with 
it. The first is the battle of Ethandun, in which he defeated the 
Danes. We will not go into that disputed question, as to where, 
really and positively, the great fight took place, except to say that 
vee ee ae 
