A certain amount of the old furniture remains to the church in the restored screen of the fourteenth century, and the reredos over the communion table and another in the Lady Chapel; here, too, is the old altar stone of Purbeck.  The chantry of the poor Countess of Salisbury, who was beheaded for high treason in 1541, so brutally defaced by Dr London and his infamous colleagues, stands there too upon the north; and close by in the north chapel is the tomb with fine alabaster effigies of Sir John and Lady Chydroke (d. 1455), removed from the nave, and in the Lady Chapel lie its founders, Sir Thomas and Lady West.  Of the modern restorations and additions I have nothing to say, and more especially of the monument to Shelley; a parody of a Pieta merely blasphemous, beneath the tower.

Now when I had seen all this, to say nothing of the old school-room over the Lady Chapel and the Norman house and castle mound of the De Redvers, somewhat sorrowful for many things, I began to think again of the Forest, and immediately set out where the road led to Lyndhurst, and this just before midday.

CHAPTER XIX

THE NEW FOREST AND ROMSEY ABBEY

All day I went through the Forest, sometimes by green rides, enchanted still, such as those down which Lancelot rode with Guinevere, talking of love, sometimes over heaths wild and desolate such as that which knew the bitterness of Lear, sometimes through the greenwood, ancient British woodland, silent now, where the hart was once at home in the shade, and where at every turn one might expect to come upon Rosalind in her boy’s dress, and think to hear from some glade the words of Amiens’ song: 

Under the greenwood tree
Who loves to lie with me,
And turn his merry note
Unto the sweet bird’s throat;
Come hither, come hither, come hither....

There are days in life of which it can only be said, that they are blessed; golden days, upon which, looking back, the sun seems to shine; they dazzle in the memory.  Such was the day I spent in the byways of Holmsley and Burley, in the upper valleys of Avon water, Ober water and Black water, forest streams; in the silent woods, where all day long the sun showered its gold, sprinkling the deep shade with flowers and blossoms of light, where there was no wind but only the sighing of the woods, no sound but the whisper of the leaves or the rare flutter of a bird’s wings, no thoughts but joyful thoughts filling the heart with innocence.

        Who doth ambition shun,
        And loves to live i’ the sun,
        Seeking the food he eats
        And pleased with what he gets;
        Come hither, come hither, come hither....

At evening I came to Lyndhurst.

Lyndhurst is the capital of the Forest; as its name implies it was established in a wood of limes, a tree said to have been introduced into England only in the sixteenth century.  It is already spoken of in the tenth century Anglo-Saxon ballad of the Battle of Brunanburh!