156 &uhteD Spillage* tn t&e jefo 



Castle recalls to mind, the cheerfulness and hospitality 

 that presided in an ancestral hall, while the termination 

 of ham and ton, annexed to many of the woodlands, may 

 be taken as an evidence that where innumerable boughs 

 are waving, a thronging population once inhabited. 



The memorial-tree, which now stands lone and 

 seamed, was then a sapling, for such we may conjecture 

 to have been the case, according to the well-known 

 longevity of forest-trees. Three events of great inte- 

 rest are associated with it the making desolate a wide 

 extent of country ; the death of the proud Norman, by 

 whose command the work of ruin was achieved; and 

 the untimely end of his successor. 



Had the history of William I. been written with 

 reference to his private actions, it might be noticed that 

 a tissue of domestic sorrows succeeded to the laying 

 desolate of Ytchtene. His wife Matilda died a few 

 years after, and his fair daughter Gundreda, the che- 

 rished one in her father's house, was cut off in the flower 

 of her youth. He saw with grief the jealousy that sub- 

 sisted between his sons William and Henry, and during 

 the time that Duke Robert, his first-born, continued an 

 exile and a fugitive, Richard, his second son, was gored 

 to death by a stag, as he was hunting over the wide 

 expanse which his father had depopulated. Men spoke 

 of the sad event as a just punishment on him who had 

 respected neither the lives nor feelings of those who 

 once had dwelt there. Some said, this is but one; 



