100 The New Forest : its History and its Scenery. 



written by unfriendly Chroniclers, who have good reasons for 

 suppressing the truth. The story reads at the very first glance 

 too much like a romance. In the first place, we have no less 

 than three dreams, which are always effects rather than causes — 

 after-thoughts rather than prophecies, well fitted to suit the 

 superstition of the times, and to deceive the crowd. Then, 

 too, we find the old device of the armourer craving the King 

 to take six brand-new arrows, by one of which at the hand of 

 his friend he is fated to fall on the very spot which his father 

 had laid waste, and where he is said to have destroyed a 

 church. 



It may of course be urged that all this is in accordance with 

 what we know of the eternal j)Ower of the moral laws, that the 

 sins of the fathers are ever visited upon the sons to the third 

 and fourth generations, and that time ever completes the full 

 circle of retribution. But the flaw is, that this special judgment 



Let us look, too, at the events of his reign. Crime after crime crowds 

 upon us. His first act was to imprison those whom his father had set free. 

 He loaded the Forest Laws with fresh horrors. Impartial in his cruelty, 

 he plundered both castle and monastery (^The Chronicle, Ed. Thorpe, vol. i. 

 p. 364). He burnt out the eyes of the inhabitants of Canterbury, who had 

 taken the part of the monks of St Augustin's. At the very mention of 

 his approach t';e people fled (Eadmer : Hist. Nov., lib. iv. p. 94). Unable 

 himself to be everywhere, his favourites, Robert d'Ouilly harried tlie 

 middle, and Odineau d'Omfreville the north of England ; whilst his 

 IMiiiJster, Ralph Flambard, committed such excesses that the people prayed 

 for death as their only deliverance (Awial. Eccles. Winton., in Wharton's 

 Anglia Sacra, torn. i. p. 295). 



As The Chronicle impressively says, " lv\ liis days all right ftll, and all 

 wrong in the sight of God and of the world rose." Norman and English, 

 friend and foe, priest and layman, were united by one common bond of 

 hatred against the tyrant. It could only be expected that as his life was, so 

 his death would be ; that he would be betrayed by his companions, and in 

 his utmost need deserted by his friends. 



100 



