158 



Cranborne Chase. 



their dictates in his table-book, though on horseback. I remember 

 some old relations of mine and other old men hereabout that have 

 seen Sir Philip doe this. For those nimble fugitives [the Muses] 

 except they be presently registered, fly away and perhaps can never 

 be caught again. But they were never so kind as to appear to me, 

 though I am the Tenant. It seems they reserve that grace only 

 for the proprietors, the family of Herberts to whom they have con- 

 tinued a constant kindness for a succession of generations. These 

 were the places where our kings and queens used to divert them- 

 selves in the hunting season. Cranborne Chase which reaches 

 from Harnham Bridge at Salisbury to Blandford was belonging to 

 Roger Mortimer, Earl of March. His seate was at his Castle of 

 Cranborne. If these oaks were as vocal as Dodona's, some of the 

 old ones could give us an account of the secret whispers between 

 the great Earle and the false Queen Isabel!/* 1 



Of the deer he says :— " It was a question which were the heaviest, 

 those of Cranborne or those of Groveley Forest. Groveley deer 

 were generally the heaviest but Dr. Randal Caldicot of Bishopstone 

 had told him of one from Cranborne that was weighed at his house 

 and it weighed 8 score pounds. About the year 1650 there were 

 in Vernditch Walk a 1000 or 1200 fallow deere but now [1689] 

 there are not above 500." If the Groveley deer were the heaviest* 

 their skins were not the best, for (says Aubrey) : — " a glover at 

 Tisbury will give sixpence more for a buck skin of Cranborne Chase 

 than of Groveley, and he says he can afford it." 2 



" At Cobley Walk, they used to kill bucks sooner in the year 

 than in other places they could. They did find maggots under the 

 horns which would gnaw the roots of them and cause them to fall 

 off. This unusuall discovery was affirmed to me by Cosin Hawles 

 the Ranger there and my very good friend. Pliny mentions this. 8 



1 "Natural History of Wiits," p. 108. 



2 "Natural History of Wilts," p. 58. 



3 " Natural History of Wilts," MS. Aubrey gives the passage in Pliny. 

 " Cervis in capite inesse vermiculi sub linguae inanitate, et circa articulum qua 

 caput jungitur, numero viginti produntur." (Plin. Nat. Hist., Lib. xi., 49. 

 Valpy's Edit.) which Philemon Holland (vol. i., p. 333, renders : — " Stags (by 

 report) have within their heads twenty little wormes, to wit, in the concavity 

 under their tongue, and about that joincture where the head is grafted to the 

 chine bone." 



