I do not here enter into the question of William's right to make the Forest—about this there can be no doubt—but simply into the methods which he employed in its formation.[1] The earliest Chronicler of the event, Gulielmus Gemeticensis, who has been so often quoted in evidence of William's cruelty, both because he was a Norman, and chaplain to the King, really proves nothing. In the first place, the monk of Jumieges did not write this account, but some successor, so that the argument drawn from the writer's position falls to the ground.[2] In the second place, his successor's words are—"Many, however, say (ferunt autem multi) that the deaths of Rufus and his brother were a judgment from heaven, because their father had destroyed many villages and churches in enlarging (amplificandam) the New Forest."[3] The writer offers no comment of his own, and simply passes over the matter, as not worth even refutation. His narrative, however, if it tells at all, tells against the common theory, as he states that William only extended the limits of a former chase.
- ↑ Concerning the King's prerogative to make a forest wherever he pleased, and the ancient legal maxim that all beasts of the chase were exclusively his and his alone, see Manwood—A Treatise of the Lawes of the Forest, ch. ii. ff. 23-33, and ch. iii. sect. i. f. 33, 1615. We must remember, too, that, before the afforestation, as we learn from Domesday, William not only owned as his demesne, inherited from Edward the Confessor, a great deal of land in the district—at Ashley, Bashley, Hubborn, Wootton, Pilley, &c, besides nearly the whole of the Hundred of Boldre, but kept some—as at Eling, Breamore, and Ringwood—in his own hands.
- ↑ Bouquet. Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France, tom. xi., pref, No. xii. p. 14; and tom. xii., pref., No. xlix. pp. 46-48. Some account of him may be found in tom. x. p. 184, foot-note a, and in the preface of the same volume, No. xv. p. 28. See also preface to tom, viii., No. xxxi., p. 24, as also p. 254, foot-note a.
- ↑ De Ducibus Normannis, book vii. c. ix.; in Camden's Anglica Scripta, p. 674.
