THE NEW FOREST. 229 
We have it on the authority of some of the earliest 
historians, such as Walter Mapes, the Chaplain to 
Henry II., and Henry of Huntingdon, his con- 
temporary, that William the Conqueror, in creating the 
New Forest, devastated a wide district of cultivated 
land, demolished thirty-six churches, exterminated the 
inhabitants, and converted the land to the use of wild 
animals ; and the late Mr. Freeman, the able historian of 
the Norman Conquest, gave to this legend the weight 
of his great authority, though admitting that there may 
have been some exaggeration. With all respect, however, 
to this eminent writer, it is difficult for anyone who 
knows the Forest to believe the story, to the extent that 
he has done. 
That the Forest was established as such by this 
King admits of no doubt. He lived mainly at Win- 
chester, when in England, and the district between the 
River Avon and Southampton Water was conveniently 
near; but the physical condition of this district and the 
miserable soil of the greater part of the Forest seem to 
negative the suggestion that it could ever have been 
thickly peopled, or have contained thirty-six churches, 
beyond what still exist there. 
The Saxon Chronicle, written during the lifetime of 
William, by no means in a friendly tone to him, which 
gives in great detail the other important incidents of his 
reign, and which condemns in strong language the 
passion of the great monarch for the chase, makes no 
mention of the formation of the New Forest. Such an 
event as the devastation of a wide district and the 
