OF SELBORNE. 



LETTER IX. 



TO THE SAME. 



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

 subject, to inform you that Wblmer, with her sister forest 

 Ayles Holt, alias Alice Holtf 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 Pembroke ; 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 construct- 

 ing, 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 enclosures, yet no two soils can be more different : 

 for The Holt consists of a strong loam, of a miry nature, car- 

 rying 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 



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

 AishoJtr 



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

 " unam capellam in haia sua de Kingesle." " Haia, sejjes, sepimentum, 

 "parcus : a Gall, haie and haye" Spelman's Glossary. 



r This prince was the inventor of mezzotinto. 



