Identifier: fairwomeninpaint00shar (find matches)
Title: Fair women in painting and poetry
Year: 1894 (1890s)
Authors: Sharp, William, 1855-1905
Subjects: Women in literature Women in art Women Beauty, Personal
Publisher: London : Seeley New York : Macmillan
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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fixed enginesof justice as primitive as the oaks of Brockenhurst. One endof the bare old chamber is fitted up as a court, in which offendersagainst the custom of the forest, wood and fern stealers, or thosewho have transgressed the limits within which cattle may be kept,or other liberties of the forest, are presented by the agisters, whoplay the part of the knights from the hundreds, and townsmen fromthe township, who presented criminals in the shire moots. Pre-sented, the offender certainly is ; for he is exposed to the publicview in the most primitive dock existing in England. The prisonersits on a kind of perch, to which he climbs by a step. Behind thisis a square back with cross-pieces of black oak, with the rough axemarks still showing, and immediately in front, beyond the narrowinterval of the clerks table is the full bench of verderers. Assuming,as is probable, that this is a copy of the most ancient arrangement ofsuch courts, we can imagine how some trembling wretch, with the
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-S3 ^ 5S£ O? £ 12 THE NEW FOREST prospect of maiming or blinding before him, must have felt beforethe scowl of the forest rangers of Norman or Angevin kings, onthis seat of justice over against him. Besides the rude accommodationfor judges and prisoners, the court contains a recess filled with bookson forest law which, by that grace of congruity which seems inseparablefrom everything in this strangely perfect region, are screened by themost appropriate curtain that could be devised, the skin of a red deer.The walls are decorated by horns of deer, red and fallow. Whateverthe history of the great stirrup, which hangs upon the wall, and is saidto have belonged to William Rufus, it is a notable relic, and thoroughlyin place in this hall of woodland justice. It is clearly the stirrup inwhich the thickly-mailed feet of the days of plate armour, with theirbroad iron toes were thrust, thick enough and broad enough to givesupport for the most ponderous horseman in his coat of steel;and so wi

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