168 Cranborne Chase. 



gentlemen had gamekeepers. There was a head ranger^ who, if he 

 met or heard of persons with gun and dogs, warned them off: and 

 as to there being no part of Wiltshire within the Chase, as was 

 alleged, he laughs that notion to scorn, having over and over again 

 in company of Lord Rivers, hunted and killed deer all along the 

 chain of coppices between Berwick and Ebbesbourne. 



We all know that field-sports are so fascinating to some minds, 

 that the very idea of turning sporting ground to any more useful 

 purpose is a barbarism. In North Wilts, near Malmesbury, we 

 have what is called the Heath, of five hundred acres, given to that 

 town by King Athelstan, which for centuries, indeed, ever since his 

 time, had been used generally by the people for all sorts of purposes. 

 It naturally became a rough, wild, marshy, unprofitable common. 

 Some years ago it was enclosed, and converted to respectable agri- 

 culture. An old gentleman in that neighbourhood once said to me, 

 very gravely and earnestly, " There never was such a mistake in 

 the world as enclosing Malmesbury Common." Thinkiug that some 

 great social or political blunder had been committed, I asked, why 

 so ? " Why, because it was the finest place in the world for snipe 

 and wild-fowl." So, also, does W. Chafin, Clerk, sigh and groan 

 deeply over the proposed disfranchisement of Cranborne Chase : and 

 in short, after enumerating all sorts of evils that are to arise from 

 such a proceeding, he concludes with an earnest hope — [he was 

 almost saying "with a daily prayer'^] — that all these evils may be 

 averted, and that Cranborne Chase may remain in a flourishing 

 "state — [for how long, do you suppose ?] — till the general dissolu- 

 tion of all things " ! 



John Aubrey mentioned bustards as common in his time in the 

 Chase. Mr. Chafin has a story about these birds worth noting. 

 He was not living at the time in the Chase, but at Wallop, between 

 Andover and Salisbury : and going out with his gun he was told by 

 some person of a large flight of green plovers that had settled on a 

 certain piece of ground. They proved to be a flight of what he had 

 never met with before, dotterells : so there being little chance of 

 getting very near them, he fired from horseback. On the report of 

 his gun, what was his amazement to see at the further end of the 



I 



