76 The New Forest : its History and its Scenery. 



its own story. It consists of one long straggling street, and a 

 few scattered houses, with one or two village inns. Much of 

 its wildness has been spoilt by the railroad ; and in consequence, 

 too, of the adjoining manor of Brockenhurst, it appears even 

 less than it really is in the Forest. Still, however, if the reader 

 wishes to see the Forest woods and heaths towards the south, 

 let him come here, and the village accommodation will only give 

 an additional charm to the scenery. I, for my part, do not 

 know that a clean English village inn, with its sanded floor, 

 and its best parlour kept for state occasions, makes such bad 

 quarters. It is a real pleasure to find some spots on the earth 

 not yet disfigured by fashionable hotels. 



At Brockenhurst existed one of those tenures of knight- service 

 once so common throughout England. Here Peter Spelman, an 

 ancestor of the antiquary, held a carucate of land by the service 

 of finding for Edward II. an esquire clad in coat of mail foi 

 forty days in the year, and whenever the King came to the 

 village to hunt, litter for his bed, and hay for his horse, which 

 last clause will give us some insight into the often rough living 

 and habits of the fourteenth century.* Here, too, not many 

 years ago, droves of deer would at night, when all was still, 

 race up the village street, and the village dogs leap out and kill 

 them, or chase them back to the Forest. 



The church, one of the only two in the Forest mentioned 



* Blount's Fragmenta Antiquitatis. Ed. Beck with, p. 80, 1815. Testa de 

 Nevill, p. 235 a (118). We know, however, that our forefathers, long 

 before this, possessed beds, or rather cots, hung round with rich embroidered 

 canopies. For their general love, too, of comfort and personal ornament 

 and dress, we need go no further than to Chaucer's description of " Richesse," 

 in his Eomaunt of the Rose. Englishmen, however, were still then, as now, 

 ever ready to lead a rough life if necessary, and to make their toil their 

 pleasure. 



