Page:The New Forest - its history and its scenery.djvu/174

Rh ever, like so many other old towns, it has not increased in a relative proportion with younger rivals favoured by the accidents of position or commerce. Like, too, all other similar ports, it has its tales to tell of French invasions, and, like similar boroughs, of the Civil War; but they are merely traditional, and, therefore, vague and unsatisfactory. Loyal from first to last, it is said to have at its own cost supplied with provisions the ships of Prince Charles, when he lay in the Yarmouth Roads, hoping to rescue his father from Carisbrook. In still later times, carried away by Protestant sympathies, it espoused the cause of the imbecile Monmouth, the mayor raising some hundred men to join his standard.

Most of the places round Lymington, Buckland Rings, Boldre Church, Sway Common, with its barrows, we have already seen. A little, though, to the eastward, at Baddesley, near Sowley Pond, formerly stood a Preceptory of the Knights Templar, and afterwards of those of St. John of Jerusalem. At the Dissolution it was granted to Sir Thomas Seymour, and again by Edward VI. to Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, but subsequently, under Mary, restored to the Hospitallers. Nothing of it is now left.

Here, then, at Lymington, we have been the whole circumference of the Forest. I do not know that I have omitted anything of real interest. Mere idle gossip, vague stories, I have 156