65 
the deer, which he loved as if he had been their father ;” and 
there are few who do not know that it was in a sylvan glade of 
“the New Forest that Wat Tyrel’s arrow found a resting-place in 
the heart of William Rufus. 
A great deal of planting was done in the New Forest in the 
days of the Tudor kings, and it is believed that most of the 
old oaks and beeches, which are at present the glory of the place, 
date their existence from the days of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth. 
According to the best accounts, the Stuart kings, save James VI, 
did little for it. Renewed interest, however, was taken in the 
Forest by William III., and it subsequently became one of the 
most important centres for the growing of oak timber for the 
Royal Navy. Iron having superseded oak in the building of war- 
ships, the same interest is not now taken by the Government of the 
country in the growing of trees in the New Forest ; and at the present 
time this curious fact has to be recorded, that in this immense tract 
of Crown property the deputy-surveyor has no power, nay, dare not, 
by Act of Parliament, plant a single tree in the open Forest. This 
extraordinary state of matters is the latest outcome of the dispute 
of centuries between the Crown and those who possess “ rights of 
common” to cut turf and ferns, and to graze their cattle and 
horses in the Forest. These so-called “rights,” shadowy at first, 
have grown with the years, and were never more strictly enforced 
than they are at this moment. Some forty years ago, as the result 
of a Royal Commission which perambulated the Forest and heard 
evidence, a register of all who possessed commoners’ rights was 
made up, and at the present time there are about nine hundred 
names upon it. Belonging to these commoners there are about five 
thousand head of cattle and ponies roaming over the Forest, picking 
up an existence amid its heathery wastes, or under the shelter of 
the older woods, and such rights are so jealously guarded that not 
long since the Lyndhurst Golf Club were threatened with a process 
of law for making holes in the turf to the damage of the grazings. 
In 1851 an Act was passed for planting the Forest, but it was 
never fully carried into force, owing to the bitter opposition of the 
commoners and those who made the place a public playground. 
A good many plantations, however, were formed under that Act, 
some of considerable extent ; but in 1870, as the result of another 
Act of Parliament, all planting operations were stopped, so that, 
save in those plantations which are enclosed, there is no chance of 
the natural regeneration of the woods being accomplished, as cattle 
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