THE NEW FOREST. 229 



We have it on the authority of some of the earliest 

 historians, such as Walter Mapes, the Chaplain to 

 Henry II., and Henry of Huntingdon, his con- 

 temporary, that William the Conqueror, in creating the 

 New Forest, devastated a wide district of cultivated 

 land, demolished thirty-six churches, exterminated the 

 inhabitants, and converted the land to the use of wild 

 animals ; and the late Mr. Freeman, the able historian of 

 the Norman Conquest, gave to this legend the weight 

 of his great authority, though admitting that there may 

 have been some exaggeration. With all respect, however, 

 to this eminent writer, it is difficult for anyone who 

 knows the Forest to believe the story, to the extent that 

 he has done. 



That the Forest was established as such by this 

 King admits of no doubt. He lived mainly at Win- 

 chester, when in England, and the district between the 

 liiver Avon and Southampton Water was conveniently 

 near ; but the physical condition of this district and the 

 miserable soil of the greater part of the Forest seem to 

 negative the suggestion that it could ever have been 

 thickly peopled, or have contained thirty-six churches, 

 beyond what still exist there. 



The Saxon Chronicle, written during the lifetime of 

 William, by no means in a friendly tone to him, which 

 gives in great detail the other important incidents of his 

 reign, and which condemns in strong language the 

 passion of the great monarch for the chase, makes no 

 mention of the formation of the New Forest. Such an 

 event as the devastation of a wide district and the 



