Ch. III. 



KENT. 



71 



Crown, and long the principal seat of the 

 Sackvilles Dukes of Dorset, is celebrated 

 for its extensive park, ornamented with 

 the finest beech trees, and ' covered with 

 as fine a turf as any in the world.' The 

 park of Knole at present contains 1,000 

 acres, more than half of which is covered 

 with timber ; there is a herd of 400 fallow- 

 deer. (Adjoining Knole is Wilderness, 

 the seat of the Marquis Camden. Here 

 Lord Chief Justice Pratt, who died in 

 1724, enclosed a park; disparked after 

 the decease of the first marquis in 

 1840.) 



Cobham, the ancient seat of the Cobham 

 family, and now of the Earl of Darnley, 

 near Gravesend : the park contains about 

 S30 acres, and a herd of 800 fallow- 

 deer. 



Lullingstone, a fine old park with an- 

 cient oaks, and fine hawthorns, containing 

 650 acres of beautifully broken ground, 

 and a herd of 400 black and fallow fallow- 

 deer. 



Penshurst, the old Sidney seat, at pre- 

 sent I believe without deer, claims how- 

 ever, from its historical character in 

 ancient times, some notice among the 

 parks of this country : — 



Thou hast thy walks for health as well as sport, 

 Thy mount to which the Driads do resort, 

 Where Pan and Bacchus their high feasts have 



made, 

 Beneath the broad beech and the chestnut 



shade ; 

 That tall tree which of a nut was set , 

 At his great birth where all the Muses met." 



The tree here alluded to was called 

 'Bears-Oak,' and was planted at the birth 

 of Sir Philip Sidney in 1554. 



Besides Lambard's list of ancient Kent- 

 ish parks, Saxton, in his map of that 



Ben Jonson's Forest. 



County dated in 1575, marks parks at 

 Tunbridge, Ulcum, Hemsted, Hasiing- 

 ligh, and Forde ; the last a little north of 

 Canterbury, one of the minor palaces of 

 the Archbishops of Canterbury. In Speed's 

 map, early in the reign of James I., other 

 parks were noticed at Bromley, Scott's 

 Hall, Hanger, Bocton-Malherbe, Through- 

 ley, and Eastwell. Leland, in his ' Itine- 

 rary,' notes also a park at Sutton Valance 

 by Boxley, in this county, belonging to 

 the Cliffords,* though he has very incor- 

 rectly described the situation of the place, 

 Sutton Valance being four or five miles 

 south of Boxley. 



The Patent Rolls preserve also a few 

 notices of parks in Kent. In the forty- 

 sixth year of Henry III. William de Say 

 received license to impark his Wood of 

 Hangre, within the bounds of the forest 

 of Pembury. This is the park before al- 

 luded to, and marked in Speed's map of 

 the county. 



In the eighteenth of Edward II., David 

 de Strabolgi, Earl of Athol, had hcense to 

 impark his wood of Northiuood in the 

 Hundred of Whitstable in this county. 

 In the fifteenth of Edward III., WaUer 

 de Say had hcense to impark one hundred 

 acres of land and wood in ' Bierlenge,' and 

 a certain road through the midst of them. 

 This regards the ancient seat afterwards 

 of the Nevill family at Birling in this 

 county. In the thirty- third year of the 

 same reign the king confirmed to the 

 Archbishop of Canterbury the grant made 

 to him by William Morant, who engaged 

 that neither he nor his heirs would make 

 any park in his domain lands in Chevening 

 to the prejudice of the archbishop's free 

 chase there. Morants Court, the ancient 



2 Leland's Itin. vol. vi. p. 27, fol. 28. 



