22 CHARLES II. IN DORSET. 



detailed narratives given by Blount in his " Boscobel," by Captain 

 Ellesdon in his letter to Lord Clarendon, and by Mrs. Anne 

 Wyndham in her tract " Claustrum Regale Reseratum," to say 

 nothing of the well recognised danger that must have attended 

 his concealment in a house belonging to so well known a Royalist 

 as Sir Hugh Wyndham, all tend in the opposite direction, and I 

 am afraid that Pilsdon, like many other claimants to the honour 

 of having entertained or sheltered the King, must be content to 

 rest its claim (as I have said before) upon tradition only. The 

 old manor-house, now but a farmhouse, with its fine old mullioned 

 windows, and well cut label over the entrance door, still maintains 

 a dignified appearance in its quiet retirement, though shorn of 

 much of its beauty and size, and I do not know at the present 

 moment a house better adapted for a similar purpose. At a 

 distance from anything that can be called a road, it is fairly 

 inaccessible at the best of times, as I have known to my cost ; 

 whilst what it really may be in bad weather, let those who were 

 imprisoned in it during the fearful snow-storm of January 18th, 

 1881, say how many days passed before any food, beyond what 

 happened to be in the house at the time, was able to reach the 

 beleaguered garrison. 



It has occurred to me that it would be very interesting could 

 we know the present condition or fate of such of the old houses 

 as did actually conceal the King, an attempt to show which was 

 actually made by Mr. Hughes in his Boscobel Tracts. But 

 as that was now more than fifty years ago, and there have been 

 changes in some of them since then, I may be pardoned if I 

 shortly state (with regard to such of them as have formed part of 

 the subject of my paper) what condition Mr. Hughes found them 

 in at the time of the publication of the first edition of his book 

 (1830), and the state that a tour recently undertaken by myself 

 has shown them to be in now. 



I will begin with Trent, because though not actually in Dorset- 

 shire, though on the immediate borders, it formed the starting 

 point whence the wanderings in Dorset commenced, and the goal 



