From Chawton it is a short mile to Alton, famous for its breweries and hop gardens, and its church door, riddled with the bullets of the Roundheads. Our way now leads us through the woods of Alice Holt—Aisholt—the Ash wood; like Woolmer, a royal forest from Saxon times. Alice Holt was renowned for the abundance of its fallow deer, which made it a favourite hunting ground with the Plantagenet kings, and on one occasion Edward II., it is said, gave one of his scullions, Morris Ken, the sum of twenty shillings because he fell from his horse so often out hunting,{51} “which made the king laugh exceedingly.” Here, too, after the battle of Evesham, Edward, Prince of Wales, defeated Adam de Gurdon, one of Simon de Montfort’s chief followers. He is said to have challenged the rebel baron to a single combat, in which Gurdon was wounded and made prisoner, but the victor spared his life and afterwards obtained a royal pardon for his vanquished foe. A wild rugged tract of country, Alice Holt was a chosen haunt of robbers and outlaws, the terror of the wealthy London merchants who journeyed to St. Giles’ Fair at Winchester, and in the fourteenth century the wardens of the fair kept five mounted serjeants-at-arms in the forest near Alton, for their protection at that season.
Soon after leaving Alton the pilgrims would catch their first sight of the river Wey, which rises close to the town. Along the banks of this stream, flowing as it does through some of the loveliest Surrey scenery, their road was now to lie, and not until they crossed St. Katherine’s ferry, at Guildford, were they finally to lose sight of its waters. The river itself, more than one{52} writer has suggested, may owe its name to this circumstance, and have been originally called the Way river from the ancient road which followed the early part of its course.
