CHAPTER III.

ITS EARLY HISTORY.

Once the New Forest occupied nearly the entire south-west angle of Hampshire, stretching, when at its largest, in the beginning of the reign of Edward I., from the Southampton Water on the east, whose waves, the legend says, reproved the courtiers of Canute, to the Avon, and even, here and there, across it, on the west; and on the north from the borders of Wiltshire to the English Channel.

These natural boundaries were, as we shall see, reduced in that same reign. Since then encroachments on all sides have still further lessened its limits; and it now stretches, here and there divided by manors and private property, on the north from the village of Bramshaw, beyond Stoney Cross, near where Rufus fell, or was supposed to fall, to Wootton on the south, some thirteen miles; and, still further, from Hardley on the east to Ringwood, the Rinwede of _Domesday_, on the west.

In the year 1079, just thirteen years after the battle of Hastings, William ordered its afforestation. From Turner and Lingard down to the latest compiler, our historians have represented the act as one of the worst pieces of cruelty ever committed by an English sovereign. Even Lappenberg calls the site of the Forest “the most thriving part of England,” and says that William “mercilessly caused churches and villages to be burnt down within its circuit;”[9] and, in another place, speaks of the Conqueror’s “bloody sacrifice,” and “glaring cruelty towards the numerous inhabitants.”[10] To such statements in ordinary writers we should pay no attention, but they assume a very different aspect when put forward, especially in so unqualified a way, by a historian to whom our respect and attention are due. I have no wish to defend the character of William. He was one of those men whose wills are strong enough to execute the thoughts of their minds, ordained by necessity to rule others, holding firmly to the creed that success is the best apology for crime. Yet, too, he had noble qualities. Abroad he was feared by the bad, whilst at home such order prevailed throughout England, that a man might travel in safety “with his bosom full of gold” from one end to the other.[11]

What I do here protest against is the common practice of implicitly believing every tradition, of repeating every idle story which has been foisted into the text either by credulity or rancorous hatred—of, in fact, mistaking party feeling for history. The Chroniclers had every reason to malign William. His very position was enough. He had pressed with a heavy hand on the Old-English nobles, stripped them of their lands, their civil power, and their religious honours; and failing to learn, had, like a second Attila, tried to uproot their language.

The truth is, we are so swayed by our feelings that the most dispassionate writer is involuntarily biassed. We in fact pervert truth without knowing we do so. Language, by its very nature, betrays us. No historian, with the least vividness of style, can copy from another without exaggeration. The misplacement of a single word, the insertion of a single epithet, gives a different colour and tone. And, in this very matter of the New Forest, we need only take the various accounts, as they have come down, to find in them the evidences of their own untruth.[12]

I do not here enter into the question of William’s right to make the Forest—about this there can be no doubt—but simply into the methods which he employed in its formation.[13] The earliest Chronicler of the event, Gulielmus Gemeticensis, who has been so often quoted in evidence of William’s cruelty, both because he was a Norman, and chaplain to the King, really proves nothing. In the first place, the monk of Jumièges did not write this account, but some successor, so that the argument drawn from the writer’s position falls to the ground.[14] In the second place, his successor’s words are—“Many, however, say (_ferunt autem multi_) that the deaths of Rufus and his brother were a judgment from heaven, because their father had destroyed many villages and churches in enlarging (_amplificandam_) the New Forest.”[15] The writer offers no comment of his own, and simply passes over the matter, as not worth even refutation. His narrative, however, if it tells at all, tells against the common theory, as he states that William only extended the limits of a former chase.

The account of Florence of Worcester is, on the whole, equally unsatisfactory. His mention of the New Forest, like that, by the way, of most of the Chroniclers, does not occur in its proper place at the date it was made—when the wrong, we should have thought, must have been most felt—but is suggested by the death of Rufus, when popular superstition had come into play, and time had lent all the force of exaggeration to what must always have been an unpopular event. Florence,[16] however, speaks in general terms of men driven from their homes, of fields laid waste, and houses and churches destroyed: words which, as we shall see, carry their own contradiction. Vitalis,[17] too, not only declares that the district was thickly inhabited, but that it even regularly supplied the markets of Winchester, and that William laid in ruins no less than sixty parishes. Walter Mapes,[18] who flourished about the middle of the twelfth century, adds further that thirty-six mother churches were destroyed, but falls into the error of making Rufus the author of the Forest, which of course materially affects his evidence.

Knyghton,[19] however, who lived in the reign of Richard II., is doubtful whether the number of churches destroyed was twenty-two or fifty-two, an amount of difference so large that we might also reasonably suspect his narrative, whilst he also commits the mistake of attributing the formation of the Forest to Rufus.

Now, the first thing which strikes us is that as the writers are more distant in point of time, and therefore less capable of knowing, they singularly enough become more precise and specific. What Florence of Worcester speaks of in merely general terms, Vitalis, and Walter Mapes, and Knyghton, give in minute details down to the very number of the parishes and churches.[20]

As far as mere written testimony goes, we have nothing to set against their evidence, except _Domesday_, and the negative proof of _The Chronicle_. Not one word does The Chronicler, who, be it remembered, personally knew the Conqueror[21]—who has related each minute event of his reign, exposed each shortcoming, and branded each crime—say of the cruelty of the afforestation. Evidence like this, coming from such an authority, is in the highest degree important. The silence is most suggestive. It is impossible to believe, that so faithful an historian, had it been committed, should never have hinted at the devastation of so much property, and the double crime of cruelty and profanity in destroying alike the inhabitants and their churches.

But the briefest analysis of _Domesday_, and a comparison of its contents with those of the survey made in Edward the Confessor’s reign, will more clearly show the nature and extent of the afforestation than any of the Chroniclers. From it we find that about two-thirds of the district, including some thirty manors, was entirely afforested. But it by no means carries out the account that the villages were destroyed and the inhabitants banished, or, according to others, murdered. In some cases, as on Eling manor, it is noted that the houses are still standing and the inmates living in the King’s Forest. Further, we find that some of the manors, as at Hordle and Bashley, though considerably lessened, kept up their value. Others, as at Efford, actually doubled their former assessments. Still more remarkable, some again, as at Brockenhurst, Sway, and Eling, though reduced in size, increased one-third and two-thirds in value. One explanation can alone be given to such facts—that only the waste lands were enclosed, and the cultivated spared.

That this was the case we know for certain, for it is expressly stated that, in some instances, as at Walhampton, Lymington, and Rockford; only the woods are afforested, that in many more the pastures are exempted, as at Wootton, Batramsley, Oxley, Ossumley, Pilley, Boldreford, Vicar’s Hill, Yaldhurst, Boldre, and numerous other places.[22] The manor of Totton, though close to the Forest, was not touched, although all the neighbouring estates were in various degrees afforested, simply because it consisted of only pasture and plough-land, whose value had increased no less than one-fourth. Nothing, therefore, can be more conclusive than that the Conqueror did not mercilessly make a total wilderness of the district, but, not without some consideration, chose and took only those parts which were suitable for the purposes of the chase.

In the woods which were afforested people were allowed to live;[23] though, probably, they voluntarily left them, as labour could not there be so well obtained as in the unafforested parts.[24] In all other respects there seems to have been no disarrangement. Both on the outskirts and in the heart of the Forest, the villains and borderers still worked as before, carrying on their former occupations.[25] The mills at Bashley, and Milford, and Burgate, all in the Forest, went on the same. The fisheries at Holdenhurst and Dibden were undisturbed. The salterns at Eling and Hordle still continued at work, showing that the people still, as before, sowed and reaped their corn, and pastured and killed their cattle.

Again, in other ways, _Domesday_ still more clearly contradicts the Chroniclers, as to the inhabitants being driven out of their homes. Canterton was held by Chenna of Edward, and still in _Domesday_, in part, remains in his possession. Ulviet, the huntsman, who had rented Ripley manor under Edward, still rents the unafforested portion. His son, Cola, also a huntsman, holds, as his sub-tenant, land at Langley, which he had rented of Edward; whilst his other son, Alwin, holds land at Marchwood, which, also, he had rented. Saulf, a West-Saxon thane, who had held land at Durley of Edward, now holds it at Batramsley, and his wife at Hubborn, which he had also rented of Edward.[26]

Ulgar, a West-Saxon, holds the fourth of a hyde at Milford, just as he had held it of Edward; with this difference, that it was now assessed at three-fourths of a rood, on account of the loss sustained by the woods being taken into the Forest. The sons of Godric Malf, another West-Saxon thane, hold the same lands which their father had held of Edward, at Ashley and Crow, as also the manors of Bisterne and Minstead, these last being rated considerably less than their real values, on account of the afforestations, and what we should now call severance. The West-Saxon Aluric rents property at Oxley, Efford, and Brockenhurst, which his father and uncle rented under Edward, and not only receives lands at Milford in exchange for some taken into the Forest, but actually buys estates at Whitefields from other West-Saxons.[27]

Such facts must be stronger than any mere history compiled by writers who were not only not near the spot, but the majority of whom lived a long time after the events they venture so minutely to describe.

But we have not yet exhausted the valuable evidence of _Domesday_. The land in the Forest district is rented at much less than in other parts of Hampshire, showing that it was therefore poorer, and not only the land, but the mills. Further—and this is of great importance, as so thoroughly overthrowing the common account—we find in that portion of the survey which comes under the title, “In Novâ Forestâ et circa eam,” only two churches mentioned, one at Milford, and another at Brockenhurst, in the very heart of the Forest. Both stand to this hour, and prove plainly by their Norman work that William allowed them to remain.

Such is the evidence which _The Chronicle_ and the short examination of _Domesday_ yield. The country itself, however, still more plainly proves the bias of the Chroniclers. The slightest acquaintance with geology will show that the Forest was never fertile, as it must have been to have maintained the population which filled so many churches.[28] Nearly the whole of it is covered with sand, or capped with a thick bed of drift, with a surface-soil only a few inches deep, capable of naturally bearing little, except in a few places, besides heath and furze. On a geological map we can pretty accurately trace the limits of the Forest by the formation. Of course, in so large a space, there will be some spots, and some valleys, where the streams have left a richer glebe and a deeper tilth.[29]

But the Chroniclers, by their very exaggeration, have defeated their own purpose. There is in their narration an inconsistency, which, as we dwell upon it, becomes more apparent. We would simply ask, where are the ruins of any of the thirty or fifty churches, and the towns of the people who filled them? Why, too, did not the Chroniclers mention them specifically? Why, further, if William pulled down all the churches, are the only two, at Brockenhurst and Milford, recorded in _Domesday_,[30] still standing with their contemporary workmanship? Why, too, is Fawley church, with its Norman doorway, and pillars, and arches, formerly, as we know from another portion of _Domesday_, in the Forest, remaining, if all were destroyed? And why, last of all, if the inhabitants were exterminated, was a church built at Boldre, in the very wildest part of the Forest, immediately after the afforestation, and another at Hordle?[31]

Had there been any buildings destroyed, all ruins of them would not have been quite effaced, even in the course of eight centuries. The country has been undisturbed. Nature has not here, as in so many places, helped man in his work of destruction. They cannot, we know, have been built on, or ploughed over, or silted with sand, or choked with mud, or washed away by water. The slightest artificial bank, though ever so old, can be here instantly detected. The Keltic and West-Saxon barrows still remain. The sites of the dwellings of the Britons are still plainly visible. The Roman potteries are untouched, and their vessels and cups, though lying but a few inches under the ground, unbroken. We can only very fairly conclude that, had there been houses, or villages, or churches destroyed, all traces of them would not be gone, nor entirely lost in the preserving record of local names.

It has, I am aware, been urged that since the Old-English churches were chiefly built of wood, we are not likely to find any ruins. This may be so. But by no process of reasoning can the absence of a thing prove its former presence. Nor need we pay any attention to the argument drawn from such names as Castle Malwood, The Castle near Burley, Castle Hill on the banks of the Avon, Lucas Castle, and Broomy and Thompson Castles in Ashley Walk. These Castles are of the air—mere names, invented, as in other parts of England, by the popular mind. At Castle Malwood there is the simple trench of a camp, and recent excavations there showed no traces of buildings; whilst the Castle at Burley, and Castle Hill, and the others, were merely earthen fortifications and entrenchments, made by the Kelts and West-Saxons. Nor must we be led away by the few Forest names ending in _ton_, the Old-English _tún_, which, after all, means more often only a few scattered homesteads than even a village, still less a town or city, in the modern sense of the word.[32]

If, however, we look at the district from another point of view, we shall find further evidence against the Chroniclers. It was a part of the Natan Leaga[33]—a name still preserved in the various Netleys, Nateleys, and Nutleys, which remain—the Ytene of the British, that is, the furzy district, a title eminently characteristic of the soil.[34] Again, too, the villages and manors, such as Lyndhurst, Brockenhurst, Ashurst, and half a dozen more hursts, point to the woody nature of the place. Such names, also, as Roydon, the rough ground; Bramshaw, the bramble wood; Denny, the furzy ground; Wootton, the Odetune of _Domesday_; Stockeyford and Stockleigh, the woody place; Ashley, the ash ground;[35] besides Staneswood, Arnwood, and Testwood, all more or less afforested in _Domesday_, clearly show its character.

After all, the best evidence is not from such arguments, but in the simple fact that the New Forest remains still the New Forest. Had the land been in any way profitable, modern skill, and capital, and enterprise, would have certainly been attracted. But its charms lie not, and never did, in the richness of its soil, but in its deep woods and wild moors.[36]

Our view of the matter, then, is that William, like all Normans, loving the chase—loving, too, the red deer, as the Old-English Chronicler, with a sneer, remarks, as if he was their own father—converted what was before a half-wooded tract, a great part of which he held in demesne, inherited by right of being king, into a Royal Forest, giving it the name of the New Forest, in contradistinction to its former title of Ytene. To have laid waste a highly-cultivated district for the purposes of the chase, as the Chroniclers wish us to believe, would have defeated his chief object, as there would have been no shelter then, nor for many years to come, for the deer: and is contradicted, as we have seen, both by _Domesday_, by the very nature of the soil, and the names of the places.

The real truth is, that the stories, which fill our histories, of William devastating the country, burning the houses, murdering the people, have arisen from a totally wrong conception of an ancient forest. Until this confusion of an old forest with our modern ideas is removed, we can have no clear notions on the subject. We must remember that an ancient forest did not simply mean a space thickly covered with trees, but also wild open ground, with lawns and glades. Its derivation points out to what sort of places it was originally applied.[37] The word _hurst_, too, which, as we have seen, is so common a termination throughout the district, means a wood which produces fodder for cattle, answering to the Old High-German _spreidach_.[38] The old forests possessed, if not a large, some scattered population. For them a special code of laws was made, or rather gradually developed itself. Canute himself appointed various officers—Primarii, our Verderers; Lespegend, our Regarders; and Tinemen, our Keepers. The offences of hunting, wounding, or killing a deer, striking a verderer or regarder, cutting vert, are all minutely specified in his Forest Law, and punished, according to rank and other circumstances, with different degrees of severity.[39] The Court of Swanimote was, in a sense, counterpart to the Courts of Folkemote and Portemote in towns. A forest was, in fact, a kingdom within a kingdom, with certain, well-defined laws, suited to its requirements, and differing from the common law of the land. The inhabitants had regular occupations, enjoyed, too, rights of pasturing cattle, feeding swine, and cutting timber.[40] All this, as we have seen, went on as before, not so much, but still the same, in the New Forest. Manors, too, with the exception of being subject to Forest Law, remained in the heart of it unmolested. According to the Chroniclers themselves, some rustics living on the spot convey, with a horse and cart, the bleeding body of Rufus to Winchester. According to them[41] also the King, previous to his death, must have feasted, with his retinue of servants, and huntsmen, and priests, and guests, somewhere in the Forest, implying means in the neighbourhood to furnish, if not the luxuries, the necessities of life. In _Domesday_ we find, too, a keeper of the king’s house holding the mill at Efford; also implying, at least, in a very different part of the Forest, a neighbourhood which could not have been quite destitute and deserted.[42] At a later period, when the Forest Laws had reached their climax of oppression, persons in the Forest, as we learn from Blount and the Testa de Nevill, hold their lands at Lyndhurst and Eyeworth,[43] by finding provisions for the king and fodder for his horse. But more than all, _Domesday_, corroborated as it is by the physical characteristics of the country, by the evidence, too, of local names, by the Norman doorways, and pillars and arches at Fawley, and Brockenhurst and Milford, proves most distinctly—and most distinctly because so circumstantially—that the district was neither devastated, nor the houses burnt, nor the churches destroyed, nor the people murdered.

Some wrong, though, was doubtless committed: some hardships undergone. Lands, however useless, cannot be afforested without the feelings of the neighbourhood being outraged. And the story, gathering strength in proportion as the Conqueror and his son William the Red were hated by the conquered, at last assumed the tragical form which the Chroniclers have handed down to us, and modern historians repeated.

William’s cruelty, however, lay not certainly in afforesting the district: it consisted rather in the systematic way in which he strove to reduce the English into abject slavery; in the fresh tortures with which he loaded the Danish Forest Laws; and in making it far better to kill a man than a deer. For these exactions was it that his family paid the penalty of their lives; and the retribution befel them there, where the superstitious West-Saxon would, above all others, have marked out as the spot fitted for their deaths.