By the Rev. Canon J. E. Jackson, F.S.A. 149 



some miles from it, was held under " The Honour of Gloucester/ 

 which included great part of that county, as well as Somerset, 

 Wilts, and Dorset. This Honour belonged in very early times to 

 the Crown, and so long as it remained there Cranborne was called 

 I The Manor and Forest " : but after being granted to a subject the 

 title became " The Manor and Chase." That was the usual dis- 

 tinction. The word forest was specially limited to Royal ground. 



A forest, it must be remembered, in the ancient legal sense, did 

 not mean, as is naturally supposed, a tract of well-wooded picturesque 

 and broken ground, but a certain district, whether wooded and 

 picturesque, or not, that had been put by the Crown under the 

 protection of the severe " Forest Laws." It included the lands, 

 the parks, and woods, of independent gentlemen : cultivated arable, 

 green meadows, open downs, &c. : all of which belonged in every 

 respect, just as they do now, to this or that person, to be used 

 by them in any way they liked : only, the game — especially the 

 deer— must not be meddled with. The right of hunting all over 

 that district was exclusively reserved for the Crown, or for the 

 nobleman to whom the Crown had granted it. 



On the map 2 that accompanies this paper the small coloured 

 portion represents the original forest. It consisted of a narrow strip 

 of woody ground and pasture, beginning near Melbury, and reaching 

 along by Rushmore, as far as Cobley Lodge — about ten miles in 

 length and entirely within the Co. Dorset. The line along the upper 

 or north side of the original forest is the boundary-line which 

 divides Dorset from Wilts. 



The old Saxon and Norman Kings, as is very well known, were 

 devoted to hunting, and by degrees the range of this hunting ground 

 was enlarged, till it reached the full size shewn on the map. There 



1 An " Honour " was a large seignory whose rights and privileges extended over 

 many places, sometimes over whole counties. One of the advantages of living 

 within an old feudal division of this kind was, that before land could be sold, 

 license had to be obtained from the court of the Honour : in other words the 

 pockets both of the lord and the steward had to be refreshed. 



2 This map is reduced from the one in " Smart's Chronicle of Cranborne," which 

 had been reduced from a much larger one purposely prepared as evidence at one 

 of the trials in the Court of Exchequer, where the original is still preserved. 

 VOL. XXII. — NO. LXV. M 



