By the Rev. Canon J. E. Jackson, F.S.A. 157 



woods, respecting* the devastation of the crops by the deer, and the 

 expense incurred by the protection of their property. To them the 

 extermination of the deer was a great and permanent relief. 



Then, as to the population and labouring class. The temptation 

 to lawlessness had been ruinous to them morally. The Chase was a 

 nursery of idleness and vice : and a source of positive misery to 

 their families in many instances. Among the upper classes also an 

 unwholesome spirit of jealousy had long been fostered by perpetual 

 squabbles and serious litigation, producing discontent and ill-will, 

 instead of friendly and neighbourly feeling. So that there really 

 were none left to mourn over the disfranchisement, except some few 

 who had been used to unlimited venison and currant jelly, but 

 thenceforth had to learn how to dine without them. 



So far I have endeavoured to give you, as shortly as I could, a 

 continuous history of the Chase. There are a few notices of it in 

 the writings of the old Wiltshire antiquary, John Aubrey, whose 

 odd jottings and quaint manner of recording them are always 

 welcome. He is also here a good authority, because his family 

 were, for many years, in Charles the Second's time, occupiers under 

 the Lords Pembroke, of a farm at Broad Chalk : and he himself, as 

 tenant, resided there for a great part of his strange life. One of 

 his works, published by a former Wilts topographical society, is 

 called " The Natural History of Wiltshire," and in it he has a few 

 memoranda of the Chase : which I give in his own words. 1 " These 

 plains [he says] doe abound with hares, fallow deer, partridges, and 

 bustards. In this tract is the Earl of Pembroke's noble seat at 

 Wilton : but the Arcadia and the Daphne [meaning the subjects of 

 Sir Philip Sydney's muse and pen] is about Vernditch and Wilton^ 

 and those romancy plaines and boscages did no doubt conduce to 

 the heightening of his fancy. He lived much in these parts, and 

 his most masterly touches of his Pastoralls he wrote here upon the 

 spot where they were conceived. 'Twas about these purlieus that 

 the Muses were wont to appear to him, and where he wrote down 



1 In one of Aubrey's MSS., now in the Bodleian Library, at Oxford, are some 

 extracts relating to this Chase, " taken from Sir Edward Harley's Leiger Book.'' 

 I have not had any opportunity of examining these. 



