And still, in merry Lyndhurst hall,
Red William’s stirrup decks the wall;
Who lists, the sight may see;
And a fair stone, in green Malwood,
Informs the traveller where stood
The memorable tree.
In a note to this stanza of “The Red King,” a poem on the death of Rufus, by William Stewart Rose, bowbearer of the New Forest, and therefore, as he himself tells us, successor to Sir Walter Tyrrell, Mr. Rose says—“the stirrup, suspended among smoked escutcheons of the royal arms, and stags’ antlers, makes a good addition to the forest ornaments of the hall of judicature. The justice-seat and bar are of ancient and massive oak; an enormous bacon-rack of the same age and materials, surmounts the whole. The green habits of the judge and officers assort well with the rest; and it is impossible to see a court held under this sylvan pomp and circumstance—to view the mixed and oddly accoutred rabble of people attached—to hear their defences, founded on some wild notions of natural law, delivered in an uncouth jargon, still considerably dashed with Anglo-Saxon—to observe the sang-froid with which they hear the decision of their judges, and, not least, to observe the prompt dispatch of justice—it is impossible, I say, to witness such a scene (as a spectator once observed to me), without being transported in imagination back to the fourteenth century.”
With the exception of this and Lady-Cross Lodge, all the forest lodges now standing are those appropriated to the use of the under-keepers. Those appropriated to the principal keeper were all pulled down on the decease of the last royal Lord Warden, H. R. H. the Duke of Gloucester. Boldrewood was the last that fell, on the death of the Dowager Lady Londonderry, to whom it was lent by her son, the present Marquess.
The fall of these fine old lodges reminds us of one feature which this forest and its neighbourhood possessed in Catholic times, and which it has never lost, the glorious old abbeys. We have already spoken of Beaulieu, but never of Netley and of Binstead in the Isle of Wight opposite, so beautifully alluded to by Mr. Moile in his most extraordinary poems. The State Trials, which few people are acquainted with, but all lovers of poetry ought to know, must have also conferred something of their own character.
“In Netley Abbey,—on the neighbouring isle,
The woods of Binstead shade as fair a pile;—
Where sloping meadows fringe the shores with green,
A river of the ocean rolls between,
Whose murmurs, borne on sunny winds, disport
Through oriel windows, and a cloistered court;
O’er hills so fair, o’er terraces so sweet,
The sea comes twice each day to kiss their feet;—
Where sounding caverns mine the garden bowers,
Where groves intone where many an ilex towers,
And many a fragrant breath exhales from fruit and flowers:—
And lowing herds and feathered warblers there
Make mystic concords with repose and prayer;
Mixed with the hum of apiaries near,
The mill’s far cataract, and the sea-boy’s cheer,
Whose oars beat time to litanies at noon,
Or hymns at complin by the rising moon;
Where, after chimes, each chapel echoes round
Like one aerial instrument of sound,
Some vast harmonious fabric of the Lord’s.”
The Commissioners of Woods and Forests have made extensive plantations in various parts of the forest, which appear in a thriving condition, and are belted with a variety of pines—Scotch, silver fir, Weymouth pine, pinasters, etc., whose contrasted foliage makes a rich appearance.
CHAPTER III.
SHERWOOD FOREST.
New Forest, as we have now seen, still retains its completeness as a forest—its herds of deer, its keepers going their daily rounds, its wild horses, and swine almost as wild, and all its ancient extent of wastes, woodlands, and forest people. A widely different condition does this once noble forest exhibit. It was more than all celebrated as the scene of the exploits of Robin Hood, and his merry men. In his day, it extended from the town of Nottingham to Whitby in Yorkshire, or rather it and the forest of Whitby lay open to each other, in perfect contiguity. At a much later day it extended far into Derbyshire; but, after many dis-afforestings and encroachments, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, it contained an equal space with that of New Forest at present. Here our Norman kings delighted to come and enjoy their hunting in summer at their palace of Clypstone, built by Henry II.; and an especially favourite place of John, whose mark upon the forest trees growing in that neighbourhood, has been repeatedly found of late years, in cutting them up for timber.