[Illustration:  CRANBORNE MANOR.]

The little “Crane bourne” that comes down from the lonely chalk uplands between Cranborne Chase and Pentridge Hill gives its name to the town, which in turn gives a title to the Cecils.  The manor is said to have as long a history as that of the church, but the present building dates mainly from about 1520.  The Jacobean west wing was built by the first Cecil to take possession.  The early Stuart kings were frequent visitors, and Charles I stayed in the house just before the fight at Newbury in 1644.  At Rushay Farm, near the lonely hamlet of Pentridge, William Barnes, the Dorset poet, was born, and a forefather of Robert Browning was once footman and butler to the Banks family who lived at Woodyates.  A tablet in Pentridge church commemorates his death in 1746, but, needless to say, it has only been erected since his great descendant became famous.  A memorial to the poet has also been placed in the church inscribed with a line from Pippa Passes:  “All service ranks the same with God.”

Cranborne Chase, a lonely district of wooded hills that we shall approach again in our travels, is partly in Dorset and partly in Wilts.  It is a remnant of the great deer forest that, originally in the possession of various feudal lords, became Crown property in the reign of the fourth Edward and remained in royal hands until the time of James I. During that long period, and for many years afterwards, it was a region where the scanty population, innocent as well as lawbreaker, lived in constant fear of the barbarous laws governing the chase.  Mutilation, the dungeon or heavy fine, according to the rank of the offender, was the punishment for taking the deer.  Ferocity often breeds ferocity, and the inhabitants of the forest were for long a dour and difficult race.  The locality seemed destined to raise gentlemen of the road, and in the seventeenth century and during the next, the dim recesses of the woods were utilized for storing the vast quantities of goods landed free of duty at Poole and elsewhere.  Wiltshire people say that the original “Moonrakers” were Wiltshire folk of Cranborne Chase, and the story goes that a party of horsemen crossing a stream saw some yokels drawing their rakes through the water which reflected the harvest moon.  On being questioned they confessed that they were trying to rake “that cheese out of the river:”  with a shout of laughter at the simplicity of the rustics the travellers proceeded on their way.  The humour of the joke lies in the fact that the “moonrakers” were smugglers retrieving kegs of rum and brandy and that the horsemen were excise officials.  But the folk-lore origin of “Moonraker” is said by the Rev. J.E.  Field to belong to a very early period, probably before the day of the Saxon and to be contemporaneous with the “Cuckoo Penners” of Somerset, who captured a young cuckoo and built a high hedge round it; there they fed it until its wings had grown, when it quietly flew away, much to the astonished chagrin of the yokels.  This is a widespread legend and belongs to other parts of England besides Somerset.