CHAPTER XI.

THE VALLEY OF THE AVON.—FORDINGBRIDGE, CHARFORD, BREAMORE, IBBESLEY, ELLINGHAM, RINGWOOD, SOPLEY.

The Valley of the Avon should certainly be seen, both because large parts of its manors and villages once stood in the Forest, as also for the contrast which it now affords to the neighbouring Forest scenery. Nothing can be so different to the moors we have just left as the Valley. Though close to them, you might imagine you were suddenly transported into one of the Midland Counties, and were walking by the side of the Warwickshire, instead of the Wiltshire Avon. In the place of wild heathery commons and furzy holts, deep lanes wind along by comfortable homesteads, thatched with Dorsetshire reed. Instead, too, of dark oak and beech woods, thick hedges are white in the spring with the scattered spray of the blackthorn, and orchards glow with their crimson wreaths of flowers.

Fordingbridge, formerly nothing else but Forde, now known to all fishermen for its pike and trout, in former days held the high-road into the Forest. On the bridge the lord of the manor, during the fence months, was obliged to mount guard, and stop all suspected persons, who could only on the north-west leave the Forest this way.[145]

In _Domesday_ its manor possessed a church and two mills, rented at 14_s._ 2_d._ Though all its beech and oak woods, worth, on account of the pannage for swine, 20_s._ a year, were afforested, only three virgates of land were taken. Yet, notwithstanding this loss, it still paid the same rental as in Edward the Confessor’s reign.

The old hospital, dedicated to St. John, was dissolved by Henry VI., and its revenues annexed to St. Cross, near Winchester.[146] The church stands on the extreme south-west side of the town, with its avenue of limes, and its yews, now spoilt by being clipt. The windows of the nave are Early Decorated, whilst those of the clerestory are Perpendicular. Against the north pillar of the south chancel arch is fixed a late brass. The upper part of the east window is spoilt by its ugly Tudor headings, and the lower portion by the Commandment tables. The high-pitched open Perpendicular roof of the north chancel, however, possesses some real interest, both on account of its height and its richness of detail,—the tie-beams faced with mouldings, and the spaces above ornamented with tracery, and the braces below also carved, and the purlins enriched with bosses, whilst carved projecting figures bear up the whole.

Before, however, the traveller leaves Fordingbridge he should go to Sandyballs and Castle Hill, where are still the remains of a camp, and traces of habitations, probably used in turn by Kelts, Romans, and West-Saxons, and where, perhaps, Ambrosius entrenched himself before the battle of Charford. From here is one of the best views of the Valley. Behind us stands Godshill inclosure, and the Forest with its dark moors and woods. Below winds the Avon, with its orchards nestling on the hill side, stretching its silver coil of waters along the green meadows, the sunlight gleaming on each bend and turn.

Looking up the stream, the village of Wood Green, and the woods of Hale, and the two Charfords, one by one appear. Charford is especially noticeable, formerly Cerdeford, without doubt the Cerdices-ford of _The Chronicle_ and of Florence. Here it was for the last time that the gallant Ambrosius Aurelianus, Prince Natan-Leod, father of the great Arthur of Mediæval legends, after his many defeats, rallied the forlorn hope of the Romanized Kelts. Here, too, he fell on the greensward by the side of the Avon, with five thousand of his men, and was buried at Amesbury, which still preserves his name. Of the battle we know nothing—know only this, that the Keltic power in Wessex was broken, and that from henceforth the land from Winchester to Charford was called Natan-lea.[147]

Close to Charford lies Breamore,—the last of the Forest manors to the north-west mentioned in _Domesday_[148]—with the ruins of its fine Elizabethan hall, burnt down only a few years since, and its church standing in a graveyard full of old yews and laurels. The church has been most shamefully disfigured—stuccoed outside, and whitewashed within. Still it is worth seeing. A Norman doorway, another proof that the Conqueror did not destroy every church in the district, stands inside the south porch. A piscina, and brackets for images, still remain in the chancel.

Returning to Fordingbridge we pass through Burgate, formerly belonging to Beaulieu Abbey, where the dogs of the Lord of the Manor, like those of the Abbot of the Monastery, were allowed to go “unlawed.” The base of the old village cross still remains, but the head was, not long ago, broken to pieces to mend the roads.

Our way from Fordingbridge lies by the side of the Avon, with the new chapel of Hyde or Hungerford standing on the top of the Forest range of hills. The road soon brings us to Ibbesley, the prettiest of villages in the Valley, with its cottages by the road-side, and their gardens of roses and poppies and sweet pease, and their porches thatched with honeysuckle. Three great elms overhang the river, spanned by the single arch of its bridge; whilst the stream pours sparkling and foaming over the weir into the water-meadows, and in the distance the tower of Harbridge rises out from its trees.

The sketch which is given at the end of this chapter is taken lower down in the fields, and shows another view not so well known. But the whole river is here full of beauty, winding, scarce knowing where, among the flat meadows, one stream flowing one way, and one another, and then all suddenly uniting, coming up with their joined force against the steep banks, dark in the shade of the trees; and, being repulsed, flowing away again into the meadows, white with flocks of swans, and fenced in by green hedges of rushes and yellow flags.

Going on we reach the avenue of elms which brings us to the Ellingham cross roads. Turning up the lane to the left we presently come to Moyles Court, just on the boundary of the Forest, looking out upon the woods of Newlyns and Chartley. Here lived Alice Lisle, and here are shown the hiding-places where, after the battle of Sedgemoor, she concealed Hicks and Nelthorpe. The house is sadly out of repair; the oak floors, and part of the fine old staircase, and the wainscoting of many of the rooms have been taken away; the old tapestry is destroyed and the iron gates rusted and broken. Still the private chapel remains, with its panelling and carved string-course of heads, and its “Ecce Homo” over the place where the altar once stood.[149]

The story of Alice Lisle needs not to be told. She was found guilty of high treason not by the jury, but by the judge,—the infamous Jeffreys,—and was condemned, for an act of Christian kindness, to worse than a felon’s death.

In Ellingham churchyard, close to the south porch, stands a plain brick tomb under which she, and her daughter Anne Hartell, lie, with the simple words, “Alicia Lisle dyed the second of September, 1685;” and round the tomb, weaving its ever green chaplet, grows the little rue-leaved spleenwort.

But a nobler monument has been raised to her in our Houses of Parliament. In the Commons’ corridor she stands, bent with age, resting on her staff, with a gentle placidness shining in her face, unmoved by any fears for the future, but caring only to do what her heart feels to be right; whilst on the opposite wall, painted by the same hand, lives another of those Englishwomen of whom we may be proud,—Jane Lane, who, in her loyalty, would as willingly have sacrificed herself for one of the most ungrateful of princes, as Alice Lisle for the poor Puritans.

And about eight miles away, across the Avon, in Dorsetshire, between two fields on Woodlands Farm, runs an old-fashioned double hedge, the central ditch choked up with hazel, and holly, and the common brake. About midway down, half in the ditch and half in the hedge, stands a pollarded ash, now bored into holes by the woodpeckers. This is Monmouth’s Ash, and close to it, in the ditch, the duke, the miserable cause of so much misery, was seized, hid among the fern and brambles.[150]

To the ecclesiologist the little church of Ellingham (Adeling’s hamlet) is full of interest. Within stands the old covered carved pew of Moyles Court, and a monument to one of its former owners. The plain rood-screen, with the stand for the hour-glass, and the marks of the pulpit still remain, formerly, as we can still see, painted blue like the chancel. On the south wall traces of the staircase to the rood-loft, as well as the entrance from the outside, are also still visible. In the chancel the Early-English windows have been sadly mutilated. Over the communion-table hangs a picture of the Day of Judgment, plundered from some church in Port St. Mary, in the Bay of Cadiz, whose bad execution is only exceeded by its indecent materialism. In the south chancel wall is a double piscina. On the walls above the rood-screen, the twenty-first verse of the twenty-fourth chapter of Proverbs, and the twenty-fourth verse of the third chapter of Galatians, according to the version of the Geneva Bible, are roughly painted.[151]

As in all the other churches of the district, the churchwardens have here from time to time shown their natural attachment to ugliness. The Early-English triplet at the east end has been blocked up, the gravestones in the chancel defaced, and a brick porch patched on at the south side.

The road now winds on by low water-meadows, pastured by herds of cattle, past Blashford Green, till we reach Ringwood, the Rinwede of _Domesday_.[152] Here, at the Grammar School, was Stillingfleet educated. Here Monmouth wrote his three craven letters to James, the Queen Dowager, and the Lord Treasurer, imploring them to save that life which it was a disgrace to own.

The old church has been pulled down, and a new one, modelled in every particular after it, has been built on its site. A church ought doubtless to tell its own date by its style. Yet it is far better that we should copy a moderately good specimen than increase the number of modern abortions. At all events, this is faithfully restored, though utterly spoilt by the heavy galleries which flank it on every side. The Early-English chancel, with its recessed arcade, springing from polished shafts of black Purbeck marble, well shows the beauty of the original design; whilst, on the chancel floor, lies a fine brass of the fifteenth century to John Prophete, which, however, has been most shamefully defaced. The body is robed in a cope broidered with figures of saints—St. Michael, and the Virgin and Child, St. Peter and St. Paul, St. Catharine and St. Faith, St. George and St. Wenefride. The head, with the hood thrown back, rests on a cushion, whilst the cope is clasped with a morse, enriched with an effigy of the Saviour, crowned with a halo of light.