20 WOLMER 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 natural daughter of Prince Rupert, by Margaret Hughs ; 

 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 

 surviving 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 \vell stocked with fallow-deer, unrestrained by any pales 

 or fences more than a common hedge, yet they are never seen 

 within the limits of Wolmer ; nor were the red deer of 



* " In Rot. Inquisit. de statu forest, in Scaccar. 36 Ed. Ill, it is 

 called Aisholt." In the same, " Tit. Woolmer and Aisholt Hantisc. 

 Dominus Rex habet imam capellam in haia sua de Kingesle." " Haia, 

 sepes, sepimentum, parcus : a Gall, haie and haye." SPELMAN'S 

 Glossary. 



f This prince was the inventor of mezzotinto. \ 



J The invention of mezzotinto engraving is generally ascribed to Prince Rupert ; but, in 

 Elme's Life of Sir Christopher Wren, it is given to that eminent architect. The journals of 

 the Royal Society, for October 1, 1662, record that Dr Wren presented some cuts, done by 

 himself, in a new way ; whereby he could almost as soon do a subject on a plate of brass or 

 copper, as another could draw it with a crayon on paper. On this subject, the editor of 

 Parentalia speaks with decision, that " he 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, as it is said, of the learned 

 John Evelyn, Esq. ED. 



