This royal chase, always called “The King’s Chase,” in the lapse of ages came into possession of an earl of Salisbury. It is certain that after one of its eight distinct walks, called Fernditch Walk, was sold to the earl of Pembroke, the entire remainder of the chase was alienated to lord Ashley, afterwards earl of Shaftesbury. Alderholt Walk was the largest and most extensive in the whole Chase; it lies in the three counties of Hants, Wilts, and Dorset; but the lodge and its appurtenances is in the parish of Cranbourn, and all the Chase courts are held at the manor-house there, where was also a prison for offenders against the Chase laws. Lord Shaftesbury deputed rangers in the different walks in the year 1670, and afterwards dismembering it, (though according to old records, it appears to have been dismembered long before,) by destroying Alderholt Walk; he sold the remainder to Mr. Freke, of Shroton, in Dorsetshire, from whom it lineally descended to the present possessor, lord Rivers.
Accounts of Cranbourn Chase can be traced to the æra when king John, or some other royal personage, had a hunting-seat at Tollard Royal, in the county of Wilts. Hence the name of “royal” to that parish was certainly derived. There are vestiges in and about the old palace, which clearly evince that it was once a royal habitation: and it still bears the name of “King John’s House.” There are large cypress trees growing before the house, the relics of grand terraces may be easily traced, and the remains of a park to which some of them lead. A gate at the end of the park at the entrance of the Royal Chase, now called “Alarm Gate,” was the place probably where the horn was blown to call the keepers to their duty in attending their lord in his sports. There is also a venerable old wych-elm tree, on the Chase side of the “Alarm Gate,” under which lord Arundel, the possessor of Tollard Royal, holds a court annually, on the first Monday in the month of September. A view of the mansion in its present state, is given in the “Gentleman’s Magazine” for September 1811.
[8] Hutchins’s Dorset. Capper.
Barley-break.
Mr. Strutt, the indefatigable historian of the “Sports and Pastimes of the People of England,” says of Barley-break: “The excellency of this sport seems to have consisted in running well, but I know not its properties.” Beyond this Mr. Strutt merely cites Dr. Johnson’s quotation of two lines from sir Philip Sidney, as an authority for the word. Johnson, limited to a mere dictionary explanation, calls it “a kind of rural play; a trial of swiftness.”
Sidney, in his description of the rural courtship of Urania by Strephon, conveys a sufficient idea of “Barley-break.” The shepherd seeks the society of his mistress wherever he thinks it likely to find her.
Nay ev’n unto her home he oft would go,
Where bold and hurtless many play he tries;
Her parents liking well it should be so,
For simple goodness shined in his eyes:
Then did he make her laugh in spite of woe
So as good thoughts of him in all arise;
While into none doubt of his love did sink,
For not himself to be in love did think.