no THE EXETER ROAD 



the lord of a manor has any right to make phxnta- 

 tions of common Lands for his own or his descendants' 

 benefit. Cobbett, it will be perceived, calls these 

 lands ' wastes,' following the term conferred upon 

 them by the ' Agriculturasses ' — whoever they may 

 have been. If technically ' wastes of the manors,' 

 then the landow^ner's right to do as he will is 

 incontestable ; but, with the contentious character 

 of Cobbett before one, is it not remarkable that he 

 should praise this planting and not question the 

 riffht to call the land ' wastes,' instead of common ? 

 But perhaps Cobbett the tree-planter was contending 

 with Cobbett the agitator, and the tree-planter got 

 the best of it. 



Hook, which succeeds Hartley Row, is a hamlet of 

 the smallest size, but that fact does not prevent its 

 possessing two old coaching inns, the ' White Hart ' 

 and the ' Old White Hart,' both very large and very 

 near to one another. The Exeter Road certainly did 

 not lack entertainment for man and beast in those 

 days, with fine hostelries every few^ miles, either in 

 the towns and villages, or else set down, solitary, 

 amid the downs, like Winterslow Hut. 



Nately Scures, whose second name is supposed to 

 derive from the Anglo-Saxon scora, a shaw, or 

 coppice (whence we get such place-names as Shaw- 

 ford, near Winchester ; Shaugh Prior on Dartmoor ; 

 Shaw, in Berkshire, and many of the ' scors ' forming 

 the first syllables of place-names all over the country), 

 is a place even smaller than Hook, with a tiny church, 

 one of the many ' smallest ' churches ; standing in a 

 meadow, to which access is had through rick-yards. 



