98 The New Forest : its History and its Scenery. 



Wight was once joined to Hampshire ; but it is never particular 

 in its dates, and is ever in too much hurry to compare facts. 

 Tradition, as often as not, kills the murderer instead of the 

 murdered ; and makes the man who built the place to have 

 been born there. Tradition is, in fact, the history of the vulgar, 

 and the stumbling-block of the half-learned. 



We will look at the broader bearings of the case. The first 

 thing which strikes us is the fact that two other very near rela- 

 tives of the Red King, his brother and his nephew, also lost 

 their lives by so-called accidents in the New Forest. If we 

 are to believe the Chroniclers, his brother Richard met his death 

 whilst hunting there, according to one narrative, by a pestilential 

 blast surely, at the least, a very unsatisfactory account ;* though, 

 by another version, from the effects of a blow against a tree.f 

 His nephew Richard was either wounded by an arrow through 

 the neck, or caught by the boughs of a tree and strangled 

 a still more improbable death ;{ whilst, according to Florence 

 of Worcester, he was killed by the arrow of one of his own 

 knights. We will only here pause to notice not only the 



* " Tabidi aeris nebula " are the words of William of Malmesbury. 

 (Gesta Regum Anglorum. Ed. Hardy, torn, ii., lib. iii., sect. 275, pp. 454, 

 455.) 



f GuL Gemeticensis de Ducibus Normannorum, lib. vii., cap. ix. To be 

 found in Camden's Anglica Scripta, p. 674. 



} This seems to be the meaning of a not very clear passage in William 

 of Malmesbury. Same edition as before, p. 455. Vitalis, however, Historia 

 Ecclesiastic^ pars 3, lib. x., cap. xi. (in Migne, Patrologice Cnrsm Com- 

 pletus, torn, clxxxviii. pp. 748, 749), says he was shot by a knight, who 

 expiated the deed by retiring to a monastery, and speaks in high terms both 

 of him and his brother William, who fell in one of the Crusades. 



Ed. Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 45. Lewis, in his Topographical Remarks on 

 the New Forest, pp. 57-62, is hopelessly wrong with regard to Richard, the 

 son of Robert, a grandson of the Conqueror, whom he calls Henry, and 



