rt of the road between Hursley and Otterbourne, near
Silkstede, is called King's Lane, because it is said to have been the way
by which this strange hearse travelled.

Silkstede is a farm now--it was most likely a grange, or outlying house
belonging to some monastery--and there is a remnant of the gardens and
some fine trees, and a hollow called China Dell, where snowdrops and
double daffodils grow. But this is in Hursley parish, as is also Merdon
Castle.

The green mounds and deep trenches, and the fragments of ruinous wall,
have a story reaching far back into the ages.

There is little doubt, from their outline, that once there was an
entrenched camp of the Romans on this ground, but nothing is known
thereof. Merantune, as our Saxon ancestors called it, first is heard of
when in 755 Cynewolf, King of Wessex, was murdered there by his kinsman
Cyneheard, who was in his turn killed by the Thanes of the victim. With
this savage story it first appears, but no more is known of its fate
except that it became the property of the Bishops of Winchester, some say
by the grant of Cynegyls, the first Christian King of Wessex, others by a
later gift. It was then a manor, to which Hurstleigh, the woodland, was
only an appendage; and the curious old manorial rights and customs
plainly go back to these ancient prae-Norman times. To go through all
the thirty customs would be impossible, but it is worth noting that the
tenure of the lands descended by right to the youngest son in a family
instead of the eldest. Such "cradle fiefs" exist in other parts of
England, and in Switzerland, on the principle that the elder ones go out
into the world while their father is vigorous, but the youngest is the
stay of his old age. The rents were at first paid in kind or in labour,
with a heriot, namely, the most valuable animal in stock on a death, but
these became latterly commuted for quit rent and fines. The trees were
carefully guarded. Only one good timber tree on each holding in the life-
time of a tenant might be cut by the Lord of the Manor, and the tenants
themselves might only cut old rotten trees! But this is as much as you
will wish to hear of these old customs, which prove that the Norman
feudal system was kept out of this Episcopal manor. It was not even
mentioned in Domesday Book, near as it was to Winchester. There it lay,
peacefully on its island of chalk down, shut in by the well-preserved
trees, till Stephen's brother,