The Value of Tradition. 97 



a hideous cast-iron case.* In the woods and in the village of 

 Minestead still live some of the descendants of Purkess, who is 

 reported to have carried the bleeding corpse in his charcoal-cart 

 to Winchester along the road now known as the King's Koad. 

 Twelve miles away, on the extreme south-west boundary of the 

 Forest, close to the Avon, stands a smithy, on the site of the 

 one where, the legend says, Walter Tiril's horse was shod, and 

 which, for that reason, to this day pays a yearly fine to the 

 Crown : and the water close by, where the fugitive passed, is 

 still called Tyrrel's Ford. And Kufus lies in Winchester 

 Cathedral, his bones now mixed with those of Canute ; and 

 under a marble tomb, in the south aisle of the presbytery, 

 sleeps his brother Richard, slain also like himself in the Forest. 

 So runs the story, unquestioned save here and there by some 

 few faint doubts. f As to the tradition, I think we may at once 

 set aside its testimony. The value of mere tradition in history 

 weighs, or ought to weigh, nothing. Here and there tradition 

 may be true in a very general sense, as when it says the Isle of 



* Very much against my inclination, I give a sketch of the iron case of 

 the Stone, which the artist has certainly succeeded in making as beautiful 

 as it is possible to do. The public would not, I know, think the book com- 

 plete without it. It stands, however, rather as a monument of the habit 

 of that English public, who imagine that their eyes are at their fingers' 

 ends, and of a taste which is on a par with that of the designer of the post- 

 office pillar-boxes, than of the Red King's death , for the spot where he fell 

 is, as we have seen from the previous note, by no means certain. We must, 

 too, remember that there is no mention made by the Chroniclers of Castle 

 Mai wood, but the context in Vitalis, as also the late hour mentioned by 

 Malmesbury when William went out to hunt, show that he was at the time 

 staying somewhere in. the Forest. 



| See, as before, Lappenberg's History of England under the Norman 

 Kings, pp. 266-8 ; and Sharon Turner's History of England during the 

 Middle Ages, vol. iv. pp. 166-8. 



O 



