122 'The N'ew Forest : its History and its Scenery. 



And about eight miles away, across the Avon, in Dorsetshire, 

 between two fields on Woodlands Farm, runs an old-fashioned 

 double hedge, the central ditch choked up with hazel, and 

 holly, and the common brake. About midway down, half in 

 the ditch and half in the hedge, stands a pollarded ash, 

 now bored into holes by the woodpeckers. This is Monmouth's 

 Ash, and close to it, in the ditch, the duke, the miserable 

 cause of so much misery, was seized, hid among the fern and 

 brambles.* 



To the ecclesiologist the little church of Ellingham 

 (Adeling's hamlet) is full of interest. Within stands the old 

 covered carved pew of Moyles Court, and a monument to one 

 of its former owners. The plain rood-screen, with the stand 

 for the hour-glass, and the marks of the pulpit still remain, 

 formerly, as we can still see, painted blue like the chancel. On 

 the south wall traces of the staircase to the rood-loft, as well 

 as the entrance from the outside, are also still visible. In the 

 chancel the Early-English windows have been sadly mutilated. 

 Over the communion-table hangs a picture of the Day of 

 Judgment, plundered from some church in Port St. Mary, in 

 the Bay of Cadiz, whose bad execution is only exceeded by its 

 indecent materialism. In the south chancel wall is a double 

 piscina. On the walls above the rood-screen, the twenty-first 

 verse of the twenty-fourth chapter of Proverbs, and the twenty- 



* Monmouth, like a second Warbeck, was in all probability on his way 

 through the Forest to Lymington, where Dore, the mayor, had raised for 

 him a troop of men, and would assist him to embark. At Axminster, in 

 Dorsetshire, there is a local MS. record, " Ecclesiustica, or the Book of 

 Remembrance,''' made by some member of the Axminster Independent 

 Chapel, of the sufferings of RIonmouth's followers, which appears to have 

 been unknown to jNIucaulay. 

 122 



