THE NEW FOREST. 55 



lamented that they must thus leave house and home to 

 the use of savage beasts ; which crueltie not onely mortall 

 men living here on earth, but also the earth itselfe, might 

 seeme to detest, as by a wonderful signification it seemed 

 to declare by the shaking and roaring of the same, which 

 chanced about the fourteenthe yeare of his reign, as writers 

 have recorded.' 



"On account of the great crimes and cruelties which 

 William committed in forming this hunting-ground, it was 

 the universal belief of the people that God would make the 

 New Forest the death-scene of certain of the Norman 

 king's own relatives or descendants. 



"The first of the Conqueror's blood who met with his 

 death in the New Forest was Richard, his second son in 

 order of birth, but whom some make illegitimate. He was 

 gored to death by a stag as he was hunting. ' The judg- 

 ment of God,' say the old English annalists, ' punished him 

 in his father's dispeopling of that country/ The next was 

 William Rufus." 



Of the circumstances connected with the death of Wil- 

 liam Rufus, a graphic account is given in the chronicle of 

 William of Malmsbury, who was born about 1090 and died 

 1143, and who must therefore have been alive at the time 

 (1100) that it occurred. It pertains not to my design to 

 quote his details. Let it suffice that I state that a stone 

 was erected long afterwards on the spot on which it is 

 alleged that Rufus fell, with the following inscription com- 

 memorative of the fact : 



" 1. Here stood the oak on which an arrow shot by Sir 

 Walter Tyrrell at a stag glanced and struck King William 

 the Second, surnamed Rufus, in the breast, of which he 

 instantly died, on the 2d August, A.D. 1100. 



" 2. King William the Second, surnamed Rufus, being 

 slain, as is before related, was laid in a cart belonging to 

 one Purkess, and drawn from hence to Winchester, and 

 was buried in the cathedral church of that city. 



"3. A,D. 1745. That the place where an event so 



