ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 15 
were also placed under ban and reserved as royal 
hunting grounds, within which, under colour of 
Forest Law, horrible tyranny and oppression were 
exercised upon the Saxon villeins forming the 
rural population. 
One of the most famous of the ancient forests 
was in Hampshire, near the borders of what had 
originally been known as the Ytene forest ( Ychene, 
Eithin, ‘furze’). Between the time of Edward 
the Confessor (1042-1066) and the survey for 
Domesday Book at least 17,000 acres were 
afforested, and in making the New Forest 
William I. afforested manors, large portions of 
which were already forest. Local names end- 
ing in ham, ton, and tune are the sole remaining 
traces distinguishing the sites of what were once 
Saxon manors or villages. 
William the Conqueror’s action in ‘afforest- 
ing’ the New Forest in 1079 was certainly 
just about as ruthless as could well have been, 
but the highly-coloured versions of it recorded 
by monkish historians cannot be accepted as 
trustworthy. The wholesale destruction of 
thirty-six parish churches, or more, together 
1 See Robert Mudie’s ‘‘ Hampshire” on this matter.—Eps. 
