WARRENS. 103 



labourers employed in nursery-work, the preparation of 

 produce for sale, &c., amounted to 3561. The provender 

 for the cattle cost 220 ; the food for the deer, 102 ; and 

 for the game, 625. The rent of premises near the Long 

 Walk was 420 per annum ; and of land at Virginia 

 Water, 84. 



SECTION IV. WARRENS. 



A Warren we have found described as "a franchise, or 

 free place privileged by prescription or grant from the king 

 for the keeping of beasts and fowls of the warren, which 

 are hares and coneys, partridges and pheasants, and some 

 add quails, woodcocks, water fowl, &c." Such is the Royal 

 Warren of the Isle of Purbeck, in the south-eastern part 

 of Dorsetshire, which, like some other places in England 

 designated isles, may have been, and probably was, an 

 island once, but is no island now. It is thus described by 

 Mr C. E. Robinson Hamilton in a beautifully illustrated 

 work entitled, A Royal Warren, or Picturesque Ramble 

 in the Isle of Purleck. " It is, or has been, a little 

 province, as it were, by itself, having its own ways and 

 customs, its own interests, and its own local centre, Corfe ; 

 and as much cut of from sympathy with the rest of 

 England as if it were a real island out on the ocean. 

 Natural and political circumstances have combined to keep 

 it for ages in this condition. The fertile inhabited parts 

 have been separated from the mainland, even on the sides 

 where the sea is not, by a river with marshy banks ; in rear 

 of that, by a wide and desert heath ; and behind that 

 again by the huge barriers of inhospitable chalk which 

 conceal the pleasant valley beyond. There, within his- 

 torical times, the Castle of Wareham, now long destroyed, 

 overshadowed the bridge by which lay the only road in, and 

 that road was again commanded at the gap in the chalk 

 downs by the royal fortress of Corfe. The possession of 

 the latter stronghold, and the remoteness of the neighbour- 



