[6]For a justification of this general picture, I must refer the reader to the next chapter, where references to Domesday, as to the state of the district before its afforestation by the Conqueror, and the evidence supplied by the names of places, are given. I may add, as showing the former nature of the woods, that the charcoal found in the barrows, embankments, and the Roman potteries, is made from oak and beech, but principally the latter. Since, too, the deer have been destroyed, young shoots of holly are springing up in all directions, and another generation may, perhaps, see the Forest resembling its old condition. As a proof, beside the entry in Domesday, that the Hordle Cliffs were covered with timber, the fishermen dredging for the septaria in the Channel constantly drag up large boles of oaks, locally known as “mootes.” The existence of the chestnut is shown by the large beams in some of the old Forest churches, as at Fawley; but none now exist, except a few, comparatively modern, though very fine, at Boldrewood. Further, the Forest could never, except in the winter, have been very swampy, as the gravelly formation of the greater part of the soil supplies it with a natural drainage. Still, there were swamps, and in the wet places large quantities of bog-oak have been dug up, bearing witness, as in other countries, of an epoch of oaks, which preceded the beech-woods. Gough, in his additions to Camden’s Britannia, vol. i., p. 126, describes Godshill as being in his day covered with thick oaks. When, too, Lewis wrote in 1811, old people could then recollect it so densely covered with pollard oaks and hollies that the road was easily lost. (Historical Enquiries on the New Forest, p. 79, Foot-note.) No one, I suppose, now believes that wolves were extirpated by Edgar. They and wild boars are expressly mentioned in the Laws of Canute (Manwood: a Treatise of the Lawes of the Forest, f. 3, § 27, 1615), and lingered in the north of England till Henry VIII.’s reign. (See further on the subject, The Zoology of Ancient Europe, by Alfred Newton, p. 24.) I have hesitated, however, to include the beaver, though noticed by Harrison, who wrote in 1574, as in his time frequenting the Taf, in Wales (Description of England, prefixed to Holinshed’s Chronicle, ch. iv. pp. 225, 226.) The eggs of cranes, bustards, and bitterns, were, we know, protected as late as the middle of the sixteenth century. (Statutes of the Realm, vol. iii., p. 445, 25o Henry VIII., ch. xi., § 4; and vol. iv., p. 109, 3o, 4o, Ed. VI., ch. vii.) The last bustard was seen in the Forest, some twenty-five years ago, on Butt’s Plain, near Eyeworth. It is a sad pity that the enormous collection of birds’ bones, described as chiefly those of herons and bitterns, found by Brander amongst the foundations of the Priory Church at Christchurch (see Archæologia, vol. iv., pp. 117, 118), were not preserved, as they might have yielded some interesting results. We must, however, still bear in mind that there are far more points of resemblance than of difference between the Forest of to-day and that of the Conqueror’s time; especially in the long tracts of fern and heath and furze, which certainly then existed, pastured over by flocks of cattle.
[7]Remarks on Forest Scenery, illustrated by the New Forest, vol. ii., pp. 241-46; third edition. Some mention should here be made of Gilpin, a man who, in a barren, unnatural age, partook of much of the same spirit as Cowper and Thompson, and whose work should be placed side by side with their poems. Unfortunately, much of his description is now quite useless, as the Forest has been so much altered; but the real value of the book still remains unchanged in its pure love for Nature and its simple, unaffected tone. It is well worth, however, noticing—as showing the enormous difficulty of overcoming an established error—that, notwithstanding his true appreciation of bough-forms (see vol. i., pp. 110-12, same edition), and his hatred of pollarded shapes, and all formalism (same vol., p. 4), he had not sufficient force to break through the conventional drawing of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, and his trees (see, as before, pp. 252-54) are all drawn under the impression that they are a gigantic species of cabbage. The edition, however, published in 1834, and edited by Sir T. D. Lauder, is, in this and many other respects, far better.
[8]The following measurements may have, perhaps, an interest for some readers:—Girth of the Knyghtwood oak, 17 ft. 4 in.; of the Western oak at Boldrewood, 24 ft. 9 in.; the Eastern, 16 ft.; and the Northern, in the thickest part, 20 ft. 4 in.; though, lower down, only 14 ft. 8 in.; beech at Studley, 21 ft.; beech at Holmy Ridge, 20 ft. The handsomest oak, however, in the district, stands a few yards outside the Forest boundary, close to Moyle’s Court, measuring 18 ft. 8½ in.
[9]England under the Anglo-Norman Kings. Ed. Thorpe, p. 214.
[10]The same, p. 266.
[11]The Chronicle. Ed. Thorpe. Vol. i. p. 354. This, of course, must not be too literally taken. It is one of those stock phrases which so often recur in literature, and may be found, under rather different forms, applied to other princes.
[12]Voltaire was the first to throw any doubt on the generally received account (Essai sur les Mœurs et l’Esprit des Nations, tom. iii. ch. xlii. p. 169. Panthéon Littéraire. Paris, 1836). He has in England been followed by Warner (Topographical Remarks on the South-Western Parts of Hampshire, vol. i. pp. 164-197), and Lewis, in his Historical Enquiries concerning the New Forest, pp. 42-55.
[13]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. 25-33, and ch. iii. sect. i. f. 33, 1615. We must remember, too, that, before the afforestation, William not only owned by right of conquest, as being King, the large demesne lands of the Crown in the district, and also those estates of former possessors, who had fallen at Hastings, or fled into exile, but, as we know from Domesday, kept some—as at Eling, Breamore, and Ringwood—in his own hands.
[14]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.
[15]De Ducibus Normannis, book vii. c. ix.; in Camden’s Anglica Scripta, p. 674.