The delightful little church is the most perfect survival of those in which our forefathers worshipped from the eighteenth century down to the time of the Oxford Movement. It would be nothing short of deplorable were the hand of the restorer to be laid upon it. It abounds in galleries, one double-tiered, and has a regular three-decker, with the clerk’s seat at the bottom. Its prime glory, however, is the squire’s pew, with a fireplace and easy chairs, railed round with curtains, and possessing a separate entrance, so that these high persons can go to church without mixing with the common herd. Long may it be preserved in its integrity that we may not quite forget one phase of our religious history.
Returning to the main road, we find the Compton Arms at Stony Cross, where the coaches stop and set down their trippers, who descend the steep hill afoot to the spot where Rufus fell. Here again the scientific historian has been busy; but far be it from me to throw any doubt upon the tale. Standing beside the stone in the hideous iron casing rendered necessary by the pocket knives of its admirers, one cannot but feel some indignation against those who would explain it all away. They are as bad as the visitors who would have whittled the stone to nothing—and with less excuse. Walter Tyrell has already been whitewashed; soon the share of Rufus himself
will be eliminated, and we shall be told there was no corpse to be carried bleeding to Winchester on the charcoal burner’s cart. For my own part, whether it were plot of churchmen, private vengeance, or the deed of Saxon churls dispossessed of their rights, I doubt not that Wat Tyrell’s hand sped the fatal shaft, whether by design or misadventure, while the king stood shading his eyes from the westering sun.
Then, seeing what he had done, the slayer mounted and, urging his breathless horse up that steep hill, rode for Ringwood for all he was worth. Else why did he terrorize the blacksmith at the ford, since known as Tyrell’s, and make him shoe his horse backward to confuse the traces of his flight, and then kill the man? Dead men tell no tales, but there must have been tales to be told. And if he did none of these things, why does that forge pay a yearly fine to the Crown to this day for compounding a felony? A matter which is recorded in Wise’s History.
All the summer through the cheap tripper in hordes is deposited beside the historic stone. He gazes at it, and finding he can neither carve his name nor chip off a corner, he turns away, buys a postcard view in colours, and seeks more congenial amusement in the cocoanut shies hard by.
MINSTEAD CHURCH
Leaving Stony Cross, the road runs by Bushy Bratley along the lofty ridge that forms the backbone
of the Forest to Picked Post and down to the Avon valley. The northernmost road follows the Wiltshire border, running from Bramshaw to Fordingbridge, lonesome exceedingly and bleak, but commanding a magnificent outlook to Beacon Hill and Salisbury spire on the one hand, and over the slopes of Ashley Walk on the other. The spot where the Salisbury road enters the Forest at Nomansland is marked by an archway of fine old oaks known as “the Gate of the Forest”.