278 



Sclwood Forest. 



It puzzled me for some little time to find out who lie was, because 

 he does not find a place in Butler's "Lives of the Saints. ,J The 

 proper name was Adelgar, or Athelgar, and he was one of the 

 earliest Bishops of Creditor^ in Devonshire. I found from an old 

 record at Longleat that he was lord of the manor where the farm 

 now is, then called Langley, and that he gave it to the Abbey of 

 Cirencester-to which, as I have mentioned, the rectory and tithes 

 of Frome belonged— on condition of their building a chapel at 

 Langley and endowing one or more chaplains. Leland mentions this 

 chapel, and says that the bones of St. Algar were preserved there, 

 and that the people used to make pilgrimages to it and used to pull 

 the chapel bell-rope with their teeth. Without wishing to make 

 any remark upon the abuses and silly practices which, through long 

 lapse of time, had crept into the then dominant religion, it is only 

 just and fair to the Roman Catholics to say that whilst their religion 

 was dominant they did not neglect to provide means of civilising 

 by religious instruction, even in the most remote and out-of-the-way 

 places. Some years ago I printed in the Wiltshire Magazine an 

 account of a great number of these chapels, which were all put 

 down at the Reformation. But what took their place ? For a long 

 time nothing, so that the inhabitants of these forests and lonely 

 places were left to their own wild and independent way, without 

 even any outward emblem of religion, any building to remind them 

 of God or to put serious and solemn thoughts before them. So 

 lawless had they become that the first Lord Weymouth, with the 

 hope of reform, built a Church in the Woodlands, and endowed a 

 clergyman. Since that time another chapel has been erected at 

 Gaer Hill, and those two may be considered as now supplying what 

 old St. Algar in his day supplied to the foresters of Selwood. 



Another blank of one hundred years, and we come to the days of 

 King Alfred, who must have known his way about Selwood very 

 familiarly. There are two particular points about his history in 

 which his name, rightly or wrongly, has been often connected with 

 it. The first is the battle of Ethandun, in which he defeated the 

 Danes. We will not go into that disputed question, as to where, 

 really and positively, the great fight took place, except to say that 



