chapter xx.

[184]See Lappenberg’s _England under the Anglo-Norman Kings_. Ed. Thorpe, p. 89.

[185]Yarranton, in that strange but clever work, _England’s Improvement by Land and Sea_ (Ed. 1677, pp. 43-63), dwells at length on the quantity of iron-stone along the coast, and the advantage of the New Forest for making charcoal to smelt the metal. He proposed to build two forges and two furnaces for casting guns, near Ringwood, where the ore was to be brought up the Avon.

[186]

“That narrow sea, which we the Solent term, Where those rough ireful tides, as in her straights they meet, With boisterous shocks and roars each other rudely greet; Which fiercely when they charge, and sadly when they make retreat, Upon the bulwark forts of Hurst and Calshot beat, Then to Southampton run. _Polyolbion_, book ii.

[187]Hall’s _Union of the Families of Lancaster and York_, xxxi. year of King Henry VIII., ff. 234, 235, London, 1548.

[188]From Peek (_Desiderata Curiosa_, vol. i., b. ii., part iv., p. 66) we find that in Elizabeth’s reign the captain received 1_s._ 8_d._ a day; the officer under him, 1_s._; and the master-gunner and porter, and eleven gunners and ten soldiers, 6_d._ each, which in Grose’s time had been increased to 1_s._ (Grose’s _Antiquities_, vol. ii., where a sketch is given of the castle). Hurst, on account of its strength, was to have been betrayed, in the Dudley conspiracy, to the French, by Uvedale, Captain of the Isle of Wight. (Uvedale’s Confession, _Domestic MSS._, vol. vii., quoted in Froude’s _History of England_, vol. vi. p. 438.) Ludlow mentions the great importance of Hurst being secured to the Commonwealth, as both commanding the Isle of Wight and stopping communication with the mainland (_Memoirs_, p. 323). Hammond, in a letter from Carisbrook Castle, June 25th, 1648, says it is “of very great importance to the island. It is a place of as great strength as any I know in England” (Peck’s _Desiderata Curiosa_, vol. ii., b. ix., p. 383).

[189]Sir Thomas Herbert’s _Memoirs of the two last Years of the Reign of King Charles I._, Ed. 1702, pp. 87, 88.

[190]Warwick calls the King’s rooms “dog lodgings” (_Memoirs_, p. 334); but it is evident from Herbert (_Memoirs_, p. 94) that both Charles and his attendants were well treated, which we know from Whitelock (_Memorials of English Affairs_, p. 359; London, 1732) was the wish of the army, as also from the letter of Colonel Hammond’s deputies given in Rushworth (vol. ii., part iv., p. 1351). Of Colonel Hammond’s own treatment of the King we learn from Charles himself, who, besides speaking of him as a man of honour and feeling, said “that he thought himself as safe in Hammond’s hands as in the custody of his own son” (Whitelock, p. 321).

[191]Evidently a misprint for three-quarters of an hour.

[192]Herbert’s _Memoirs_, pp. 85-86.

[193]A Keltic derivation for both places has been proposed, but it is not on critical grounds satisfactory.

[194]Gough possessed a brass coin inscribed Tetricus Sen. rev. Lætitia Augg., found here; and adds that in 1744 nearly 2 cwt. of coins of the Lower Empire were discovered in two urns. Camden’s _Britannia_, Ed. Gough, vol. i. p. 132.

[195]The grant is given in the Appendix to Warner’s _South-West Parts of Hampshire_, vol. ii., p. i., No. 1.

[196]Like those of Christchurch, the Corporation books of Lymington are full of interest, though they do not commence till after 1545, the previous records being generally supposed to have been burnt by D’Annebault in one of his raids on the south coast. Du Bellay, however, who, in his _Mémoires_, has so circumstantially narrated the French movements, says nothing of Lymington having suffered, nor can I find the fact mentioned in any of the State papers of the time. Take, for instance, the following entries from the Chamberlain’s books:—

“1643. Quartering 20 soldiers one daie and xvi._s._ ij._d._ night, going westward for the Parliam^t service 1646. For bringinge the toune cheste from ij._s._ Hurst Castell 1646. Watche when the allarme was out of iiij._s._ Wareham 1646. For the sending a messenger to the xiiij._s._ Lord Hopton, when he lay att Winton with his army, with the toune’s consent 1648. For keeping a horse for the Lord iij._s._ x._d._ General’s man 1650. Paid to Sir Thomas Fairfax his xij._s._” souldiers going for the isle of Wight with their general’s passe

Such entries to an historian of the period would be invaluable, as showing not only the state of the country but of the town, when the town-chest had to be sent four miles for safety; and proving, too, that here (notice the fourth entry), as elsewhere, there were two nearly equally balanced factions—one for the King, the other for the Commonwealth. I may add that a little book has been privately printed, of extracts from the Lymington Corporation books, from which the foregoing have been taken. It would be a very good plan if those who have the leisure would render some such similar service in other boroughs.

[197]Warner’s _Hampshire_, vol. i., sect. ii., p. 6; London, 1795. See, too, previously, ch. xi., p. 122, foot-note.

[198]See Dugdale’s _Monasticon Anglicanum_, vol. vi., part ii., p. 800. Tanner’s _Notitia Monastica_. Ed. Nasmyth, 1787. Hampshire. No. iv.

[199]I may seem to exaggerate both here and in the next chapter. I wish that I did. For similar cases in the neighbouring counties of Dorset and Sussex let the reader turn to the words “hag-rod,” “maiden-tree,” and “viary-rings,” in Mr. Barnes’s _Glossary of the Dorset Dialect_; and vol. ii. pp. 266, 269, 270, 278, of Mr. Warter’s _Seaboard and the Down_. I hesitate not to say that superstition in some sort or another is universal throughout England. It assumes different forms: in the higher classes, just at present, of spirit-rapping and table-turning, more gross than even those of the lower; and I am afraid really seems constitutional in our English nature.

[200]Of the extreme difficulty of classification of race in the New Forest I am well aware. I have, however, taken such typical families as Purkis, Peckham, Watton, &c., whose names are to be met in every part of the Forest, as my guide. Often, too, certain Forest villages, as Burley and Minestead, though far apart, have a strong connection with each other, and a family relationship may be traced in all the cottages. A good paper was read, touching upon the elements of the New Forest population, by Mr. D. Mackintosh, before the Ethnological Society, April 3rd, 1861. Of the Jute element, which we might have expected from Bede’s account of the large Jute settlement in the Isle of Wight, and Florence of Worcester’s language (as before, ed. Thorpe, vol. i., p. 276), few traces are to be found. See, however, on this point, what Latham says in his _Ethnology of the British Isles_, pp. 238, 239.

[201]See Dr. Guest’s paper on “The Early-English Settlements in South Britain,” _Proceedings of the Archæological Institute_, Salisbury volume, 1851, p. 30.

[202]This, of course, is not the place to go into so difficult a subject. I need not refer the reader to Mr. Davies’s paper in the _Philological Society’s Transactions_, 1855, p. 210, and M. de Haan Hettema’s _Commentary_ upon it, 1856, p. 196. On the great value of provincialisms, see what Müller has said in _The Science of Language_, pp. 49-59. In Appendix I., I have given a list of some of those of the New Forest, which have never before been noticed in any of the published glossaries.

[203]In the charter of confirmation of Baldwin de Redvers to the Conventual House of Christchurch, quoted in Dugdale’s _Monasticon Anglicanum_, vol. iii., part i., p. 304, and by Warner, vol. ii., Appendix, p. 47, it is called Hedenes Buria, which may suggest that the word is only a corruption. I do not for one moment wish to insist on the personal reality of Hengest, but simply to notice the fact of the High-German word for a horse being prominent in the topography of a people whose ancestors used so many High-German words. See Donaldson, _Cambridge Essays_, 1856, pp. 45-48.

[204]On this word as explaining Shakspeare’s “gallow” in _King Lear_ (act iii. sc. 2), see _Transactions of the Philological Society_,