Tlie New Forest : its History and its Scenery. 



ever, like so many other old towns, it has not increased in a relative 

 proportion with younger rivals favoured by the accidents of 

 position or commerce. Like, too, all other similar ports, it has 

 its tales to tell of French invasions, and, like similar boroughs, 

 of the Civil War ; but they are merely traditional, and, therefore, 

 vague and unsatisfactory. Loyal from first to last, it is said to 

 have at its own cost supplied with provisions the ships of Prince 

 Charles, when he lay in the Yarmouth Roads, hoping to rescue 

 his father from Carisbrook. In still later times, carried away 

 by Protestant sympathies, it espoused the cause of the imbecile 

 Monmouth, the mayor raising some hundred men to join his 

 standard.* 



Most of the places round Lymington, Buckland Rings, 

 Boldre Church, Sway Common, with its barrows, we have 

 already seen. A little, though, to the eastward, at Baddesley, 

 near Sowley Pond, formerly stood a Preceptory of the Knights 

 Templar, and afterwards of those of St. John of Jerusalem. At 

 the Dissolution it was granted to Sir Thomas Seymour, and 

 again by Edward YI. to Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, but sub- 

 sequently, under Mary, restored to the Hospitallers. Nothing of 

 it is now left.f 



Here, then, at Lymington, we have been the whole circum- 

 ference of the Forest. I do not know that I have omitted 

 anything of real interest. Mere idle gossip, vague stories, I have 



book has been privately printed, of extracts from the Lymington Corpora- 

 tion books, from which the foregoing have been taken. It would be a very 

 good plan if those who have the leisure would render some such similar 

 service in other boroughs. 



* Warner's Hampshire, vol. i., sect, ii., p. 6 ; London, 1795. See, too, 

 previously, ch. xi., p. 122, foot-note. 



f See Dugdale's Monasticon Anglicanum, vol. vi., part ii., p. 800. Tanner's 

 Nolitia Monastica. Ed. Xasmyth, 1787. Hampshire. No. iv. 



156 



