II.] OF SELBORNE. 



LETTER IX. 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. 



BY way of supplement, I shall trouble you once more on this 

 subject, to inform you that Wolmer, with her sister forest Ayles 

 Holt, alias Alice Holt, 1 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 Hughs ; a Mr. Mordaunt, 

 of the Peterborough family, who married a dowager Lady Pem- 

 broke ; Henry Bilson Legge and lady ; and now Lord Stawel, 

 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, 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 inclosures, 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 Woluier is nothing but a hungry, sandy, barren waste. 



i " In Rot. Inquisit. de statu forest, in Scaccar. 36 Ed. 3, it is called 

 Aisholt." In " Tit. Wolmer and Aisholt Hantisc," we are told " the Lord 

 King had one chapel in his park at Kingesle." Dominus Rex habet unam 

 capeUam in haid sua de Kingesle." " Haia, sepes, sepimentum, parcus; a 

 (Jail, haie and haye." SPELMAN'S Glossary, p. 27-2. 



VOL. I. E 



