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By the Rev. Canon J. E. Jackson, F.S.A. 



f||2| HE district now generally known as Selwood lies between 

 £|g| Warminster and Frome, Longleat and Witham. You 

 may have a bird's eye view of it from the top of Cley Hill; only, 

 the whole country before you is so thickly covered with hedgerow 

 timber, that, to verify the old saying, one is hardly able to see the 

 wood for the trees. But the fact is that you only see from that point 

 a very small part of what was once included under the name of 

 Selwood, though where it began and where it ended is not easy to 

 say, owing to want of ancient maps and distinct records. We have 

 no account of the original formation of any forest, except the New 

 Forest, in Hampshire, and one at Hampton Court. 



I will divide my story into two periods— (1) The Dark one, and 

 (2) The Lighter one. I mean by the dark one that very obscure 

 time in the history of our country when we find Selwood mentioned, 

 but without any precise information as to its extent ; by the lighter 

 one, that in which we do get a few authentic accounts of it. 



Some of our modern historians— as the late Dr. Guest, of Cam- 

 bridge—have taken infinite pains to clear the indistinct and foggy 

 atmosphere of early British history. They have tried to reconcile 

 conflicting statements, to explain old names, and to suggest which 

 way such and such armies moved, or where such and such battles 

 were fought, and to identify such and such a camp as the camp of 

 Chlorus or Vespasian, or somebody else. But there is in these 

 researches so much that is merely plausible, so much that is mere 

 guessing and supposing, that the result cannot be called very 

 satisfactory. The material to work upon often consists of little 

 else than a string of obsolete names, old Welsh names, spelled 

 differently in different chronicles. Sometimes there may be a 

 slight resemblance to our modern names ; and, in such cases, con- 

 clusions and theories are occasionally presented to us which it is not 



