32 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



LETTER IX 



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 Emanuel Scroope Howe, and his Iady,,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,t 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 



* In " Rot. Inquisit. de statu forest, in Scaccar.," 36, Ed. 3, it 

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

 Dominus Rex habet unara capellam in haia suS de Kingesle." 

 " Haia, sepes, sepimenium, parous : a Gall, haie and haye." — 

 Spelman's Glossary. 



t This prince was the inventor of mczzotinlo. 



