of Henry III.; and the same king made an order that 

 none should have an iron forge in the forest without a 

 special license from the; king." 



It was in 1069 that William the Conqueror was hllntitig 

 in the Forest of Dean, when he received the firab ttews Of 

 an attack on the city of York by a Danish' army,' stSsiStfed 

 by the men of Yorkshire and Northumberland, in which 

 three thousand Normans had been killed. No sooner had 

 he learnedi the catastrophe, than he swore, 'by the 

 splendour of the Almighty,' his favourite oathi thath^ 

 would'utterly exterminate the Northumbrian p6opl<es' nor 

 ever lay his lance in rest, when he had^ once tak^n it up,' 

 until. he had done the deedj This fearful vow he^ catried 

 into effect. A, havoc more complete and diabolical Was 

 never 1 perpetrated; it overpowered men's minds^ with' a 

 wild horror and wonderment, William of Mialmesbiity, 

 who wrote about eighty years after, says, 'From York-to 

 Durham not an inhabited village remained. Fire, slai:^hter, 

 and desolation made a vast wilderness there, which con- 

 tinues to this day.' Orderio Vitalis says, that more th&n 

 a hundred thousand victims perished; 



H.—The New Foreati 



From the -preceding accounts of different Forests, it tnajf 

 be gathered that with the specific application made of th4 

 old English term '/ores*^ to a royalihunting-gfound-of gteat 

 extent — a use not unkno^vn in the use made of th* cdrresi- 

 ponding term in other languages of Europej but diflferest' 

 from the use generally made of the term at the preseitt 

 (Jay= — a forest may present a very different aspect f5f6m 

 such extended! stretches » of woodland,' altnoSt' entirely 

 covered with trees, as are met with' on the Juta ridge, 

 between: France and Switzerland, on the Sdabian 'Alps, 

 upon the Upper Rhine^ upon the Harta -Mbutiftaias iii' 

 Oevmany^and in the more northern regigtaifl of Seandin*vtai 

 FinlsHid and Russia^ 



