Page:The New Forest - its history and its scenery.djvu/104

Rh into distant woods. Most beautiful is this road in the spring. Stand on the top of Clay Hill, about the beginning or end of May, and you shall see wood after wood, masses of colour, the birches hung with the softest green, and the oak boughs breaking into amber and olive, made doubly bright by the dark gloom of firs, the blackthorn giving place to the sweeter may, and the marigold on the stream to the brighter lily.

On our left lies New Park, now turned into a farm, where in 1670 Charles II. kept a herd of red deer, brought from France, but previously used as a pound for stray cattle. Passing on by a roadside inn with the strange sign of the "Crown and Stirrup," referring to a pseudo-relic of Rufus's, preserved at the King's House, but which is nothing more than a stirrup-iron of the sixteenth century, we reach Lyndhurst—the lime wood, the capital of the Forest, the Linhest of Domesday.

William the Conqueror at one time held the place, which was once dependent on the royal manor of Amesbury. Here, after 86