WOLMER AND HOLT FOREST. 21 



cattle, can render this meer so remarkable as the great quantity 

 of coins that were found in its bed about forty years ago. But, 

 as such discoveries more properly belong to the antiquities of 

 this place, I shall suppress all particulars for the present till I 

 enter professedly on my series of letters respecting the more re- 

 mote history of this village and district. 



LETTER IX. To T. 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,* 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 na- 

 tural daughter of Prince Rupert by Margaret Hughes), 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 sur^ 

 viving 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, f as well as warrior, 

 and, among the rest, a very complicated clock, lately in posses- 

 sion 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, carrying a good 

 turf, and abounding with oaks that grow to be large timber, 

 while Wolmer is nothing but a hungry, sandy, barren waste. J 



* " In Rot. Inquisit. de statu forest, in Scaccar. 36 Ed. 3. it is called Aisholt." In the same, 

 " Tit Woolmer and Aisholt Hantisc. Dominus Rex habet unam capellam in haia sua Kingesle." 

 *' Haia, sepes, sepimentum, parcus: a Gall, haie and haye." Spelman's Glossary. 



t The invention of mezzotinto engraving is generally ascribed to Prince Rupert, though some 

 would rather assign it to Lieut. Col. Siegend, an officer in the service of the Landgrave of Hesse, 

 so early as in the year 1643, from whom, it is said, the prince derived the secret. In Elme's life 

 of Sir Christopher Wren, it is attributed to that eminent architect ; and the editor of " Paren- 

 talia," speaking on this subject with decision, states that " he [Sir Christopher] was the first 

 inventor of the art of engraving in mezzotinto, which was afterwards prosecuted and improved by 

 his royal highness Prince Rupert, in a manner somewhat different, upon the suggestion, it is said, 

 of the learned John Evelyn, Esq." ED. 



I A stiff', clayey soil, well drained, is of all others the most congenial and adapted to the 



