The Netv Forest : its History and its S'n<>nf. 



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 as 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 Eed 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 Eichard 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 tlie words of William of Malmsbury. 

 (Gesta Begum Aiiirlonmt. Kd. Hard}', torn, ii., lib. iii., ^cct. -J7.J, pp. 4.54, 

 4.55.) 



f Gul. Gemeticenxin de Ducilus Xormannoum, lib. vii., cap. ix. To be 

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



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

 of Malmesbury. Same edition as before, p. 4-55. Vitalis, however, Histuria 

 Ecclesiastica, pars 3, lib. x., cap. xi. (in Jfigne, Patrologite Cnrsiis Com- 

 pletes, 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 Crusadts. 



Ed. Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 4-j. Lewis, in his Topographical Remarks on 

 Ute New Forest, pp. 57-O2, is hopekssly wrong with regard to Richard, the 

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

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