66 THE NEW FOREST 



Alice Holt Forest, practically contiguous to Wool- 

 mer, but remained on their own barren wastes. 

 There they lived and throve until the arrival 

 of the "Waltham Blacks," and ultimately the 

 passing of the Black Act. 



The " Waltham Blacks " were a gang or gangs 

 of desperadoes, who throve in the neighbourhood 

 of Waltham, in Hants, in the earlier days of 

 George I. It was their practice to disguise them- 

 selves by blacking their faces, and hence the 

 name of " Waltham Blacks." At first their depre- 

 dations ran chiefly in the line of deer-stealing, 

 which they practised with devastating effect in 

 Waltham Chase, among the deer of the Bishop of 

 Winchester, and they went far to clear the Royal 

 Forests of Woolmer and Alice Holt. They also 

 extended their practices to such matters as cutting 

 the dams of fish-ponds in order to secure the 

 fish, setting fire to houses, barns, and stacks of 

 corn and wood, maiming of cattle, and the like. 

 The Black Act (9 Geo. I, c. 22) was passed in 

 order to check the practices of these particular 

 gentry. It made all the actions in which they 

 habitually indulged into felonies, and the list was 

 a long one. In it was included, besides the crimes 

 I have recounted above, the cutting down or 

 destroying of any trees planted as an avenue, or 

 growing in a garden, orchard, or plantation in 



