THE NEW FOREST. t>31 



which fell upon William's family in connection with 

 the Forest the violent deaths of two of his sons and 

 of a grandson when hunting there may have acted 

 as a motive to the monkish historians to find an 

 adequate explanation for such calamities, which must 

 have appeared to them to be of divine origin, as a retri- 

 bution for some great crime connected with the Forest.* 



That William, having constituted the Forest in this 

 region, administered and enforced the Grame laws in 

 it with rigour and cruelty, cannot be doubted. The 

 Chronicler of 1087 said of him, " He set mickle deer-frith 

 and laid laws therewith, that he who slew hart or hind, 

 that man should blind him. He forbade the harts, and 

 so eke the boars ; so sooth he loved the high deer, as 

 though he were their father. Eke he set by the hares 

 that they should fare free. His rich men moaned at 

 it and the poor men bewailed it ; but he was so stiff' 

 that he recked not of their hatred ; but they must all 

 follow the King's will, if the}*- would live or have their 

 land or their goods or well his peace." 



The Forest thus created was extended by his 

 immediate successors, and at one time it was thirty 

 miles in length, embracing all the land between the 

 Avon and Southampton Water. But these extensions 

 were given up by Henry III. and Edward I., in defer- 

 ence to popular agitation, and from that time till the 

 disafforesting took place in modern times the Forest 



* The subject of the alleged devastation of villages by the Con- 

 queror in order to form the Forest is fully discussed in Lewis's 

 " History of the New Forest," and in the " History of Hampshire " 

 by Woodward and Lock hart. 



