NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 27 



Holt, alias Alice Holt,* as it is called in old records, is held by 

 grant from the crown for a term of years. 



The grantees that the author remembers are Brigadier-General 

 Emanuel Scroope Howe, and his lady, Ruperta, who was a 

 natural daughter of Prince Rupert by Margaret Hughes ; a Mr. 

 Mordaunt, of the Peterborough family, who married a dowager 

 Lady Pembroke; Henry Bilson Legge and lady; and now Lord 

 Stawell, their son. 



The lady of General Howe lived to an advanced age, long 

 surviving her husband ; and, at her death, left behind her many 

 curious pieces of mechanism of her father's constructing, who was 

 a distinguished mechanic and artist,t as well as warrior; and 

 among the rest, a very complicated clock, lately in possession 

 of Mr. Elmer, the celebrated game painter at Farnham, in the 

 county of Surrey. 



Though these two forests are only parted by a narrow range of 

 enclosures, yet no two soils can be more different ; for the Holt 

 consists of a strong loam, of a miry nature, carrying a good turf, 

 and abounding with oaks that grow to be large timber ; while 

 Wolmer is nothing but a hungry, sandy, barren waste. 



The former being all in the parish of Binsted, is about two miles 

 in extent from north to south, and near as much from east to 

 west ; and contains within it many woodlands and lawns, and the 

 great lodge where the grantees reside, and a smaller lodge called 

 Goose Green ; and is abutted on by the parishes of Kingsley, 

 Frinsham, Farnham, and Bentley ; all of which have right of 

 common. 



One thing is remarkable, that though the Holt has been of old 

 well stocked with fallow-deer, unrestrained by any pales or fences 

 more than a common hedge, yet they were never seen within the 

 limits of Wolmer ; nor were the red deer of Wolmer ever known 

 to haunt the thickets or glades of the Holt. 



* " In Rot. Inquisit. de statu forest, in Scaccar. 36 Edw. III., it is called 

 Aisholt." 



In the same, "Tit. Woolmer and Aisholt Hantisc. Dominus Rex habet 

 unam capellam in haia sua de Kingesle." " Haia, sepes, sepimentum, parcus$ 

 a Gall, haie and haye." SPELMAN'S Glossary. 



t This prince was the inventor of mezzotinto. 



