26 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



LETTER IX. 



TO THE SAME. 



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 

 Emannel Scroope Howe, and his lady, Ruperta, who was a natural 

 daughter of Prince Rupert by Margaret Hughes ; a Mr. Mordaunt, 

 of the Peterborough family, who married a dowager Lady Pem- 

 broke ; Henry Bilson Legge and lady ; and now Lord Stawell, 

 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 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, carrying 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 lawns, and the great 

 lodge where the grantees reside, and a smaller lodge called Goose 

 Green ; and is abutted on by the parishes of Kingsley, Frinsham, 

 Farnham, and Bentley ; all of which have right of common. 



One thing is remarkable, that though the Holt has been of old 



* "In Rot. Inquisit. de statu forest, in Scaccar. 36 Edw. III., it is called Aisholt." 

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



in haia suft de Kingesle." " Haia, sepes, sepimentum, parcus ; a Gall, haie and haye." 



SPELMAN'S Glossary. 



t This prince was the inventor of mezzotinto. 



