196 Caine. 
enough, and with which those who are not familiar with it will have 
an agreeable opportunity of becoming acquainted in one of the 
excursions: so that to enter upon a full and detailed description of 
Bowood is unnecessary. But we must not perform the play and 
leave out a principal part. 
The great forest of Chippenham, including that of Pewsham, 
came up very nearly, but not quite, to the very town of Calne. Its 
eastern boundary was the little stream that runs from Whetham, 
supplies the lake at Bowood, then crosses the high road at the foot 
of Chilvester Hill, and falls into the Marden near Studley Bridge. 
The Marden, till it joins the Avon near Chippenham, was then 
the boundary. So that Calne itself was just outside the forest, 
Bowood just within it. "When the forest was broken up, in James 
the First’s reign, Bowood Park continued to belong to the Crown, 
and is spoken of sometimes as King’s Bowood, as if some other 
piece was sold off to some oneelse.! King James granted a lease of 
the park to a great sportsman of the day, the then Earl of Pembroke, 
for his life: the reversion to William Murray, one of the Grooms _ 
of the Bedchamber. In the words of that document it is described 
as nine hundred and sixty-eight acres, or thereabout, lying in the 
parishes of Chippenham and Calne. But Chippenham has now 
nothing in Bowood: and I believe that it is considered to be what 
is called a Liberty. 
On the death of King Charles I. it was, of course, seized upon by 
the powers of the Commonwealth : and in 1649 an Act was passed 
to sell all the timber, to pay the army with, unless it should have 
been paid from other sources by a certain day. It is likely that the 
army was not paid in time, for great havoe was made with the 
woods till another order was issued to stop it. The deer were still - 
abundant. There is a tradition, how far true I know not, that after 
old Bromham House, near Bowood, had been destroyed in the Civil 
Wars, and the Baynton family having built a new one in Spye 
Park, wished to stock their park, the Bowood deer were driven across 
1 Some portion appears to have.been granted to the Audley family, then owners 
of Sandridge, between Bowood and Melksham. 
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