[26]It is possible that whilst the survey was being taken Saulf died. If this be so, we find an instance of feeling in allowing his widow to still rent the lands at Hubborn, which could little have been expected. The name seems to have been misspelt in various entries. See Domesday, p. xxix. b, under Sanhest and Melleford.
[27]Aluric is probably the physician of that name mentioned in Domesday, p. xxix. a, as holding land in the hundred of Egheiete. Not to take up further space, let me here only notice some few out of the many Old-English names of persons in Domesday holding lands in places which had been more or less afforested, such as Godric (probably Godric Malf) at Wootton, Willac in the hundred of Egheiete, Uluric at Godshill, in the actual Forest, and Wislac at Oxley. See Domesday under the words Odetune, Godes-manes-camp, and Oxelei, p. xxix. b. See, also, under Totintone, p. xxvii. a, where Agemund and Alric hold lands which the former, and the latter’s father, had held of Edward.
[28]Passing over the later and more highly-coloured accounts, we will content ourselves with Florence of Worcester, as more trustworthy, whose words are—“Antiquis enim temporibus, Edwardi scilicet Regis, et aliorum Angliæ Regum predecessorum ejus, hæc regio incolis Dei et ecclesiis nitebat uberrime.” (Thorpe’s edition, as before quoted.) Were this, even in a limited degree, true, the Forest would present the strange anomaly of possessing more churches then than it does now, with a great increase of population. The Domesday census, we may add, makes the inhabitants of that portion which is called “In Novâ Forestâ et circa eam,” a little over two hundred. See Ellis’s Introduction to Domesday, vol. ii. p. 450.
[29]In support of these statements, I may quote from the Prize Essay on the Farming of Hampshire, published in the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England (vol. xxii., part ii., No. 48, 1861), and which was certainly not written with any view to historical evidence, but simply from an agricultural point. At pp. 242, 243, the author says: “The outlying New Forest block consists of more recent and unprofitable deposits. This tract appears to the ordinary observer, at first sight, to be a mixed mass of clays, marls, sands, and gravels. The apparent confusion arises from the variety of the strata, from the confined space in which they are deposited, and from the manner in which, on the numerous hills and knolls, they overlie one another, or are concealed by drift gravel.” And again, at pp. 250, 251, he continues: “Of the Burley Walk, the part to the west of Burley Beacon, and round it, is nothing but sand or clay growing rushes, with here and there some ‘bed furze.’... The Upper Bagshots, about Burley Beacon, round by Rhinefield and Denney Lodges, and so on towards Fawley, are hungry sands devoid of staple:” and finally sums up by saying, “half of the 63,000 acres are not worth 1s. 6d. an acre,” p. 330.
[30]In that portion under “In Novâ Forestâ et circa eam.”
[31]Warner, vol. ii. p. 33, says Hordle Church was standing when Domesday was made. This is a mistake. It was, however, built soon after, as we know from some grants of Baldwin de Redvers.
[32]Mr. Thorpe notices, in his edition of The Chronicle, vol. ii. p. 94, foot-note, its early use, in a document of Eadger’s, A.D. 964, in the sense of a town; but in the first place it certainly meant only an inclosed spot. There appears to have been at some time, in the south part of the Forest, a church near Wootton, the Odetune of Domesday, where its memory is still preserved in the name of Church Lytton given to a small plot of ground. Rose, in his notes to the Red King, p. 205, suggests that Church Moor and Church Place indicate other places of worship. Church Moor is a very unlikely situation, being a large and deep morass, and could well, from its situation, have been nothing else, and, in all probability, takes its name, in quite modern times, from some person. But Church Place at Sloden, like Church Green in Eyeworth Wood, is certainly merely the embankments near which the Romano-British population employed in the Roman potteries, once lived, and which ignorance and superstition have turned into sacred ground. The word Lytton, at Wootton, however, makes the former position certain, but by no means necessitates that the church was standing at the afforestation. Thus we know that in Leland’s time a chapel was in existence at Fritham (Itinerary, ed. Hearne, vol. vi. f. 100, p. 88), which has since his day disappeared. It would, of course, be absurd to argue that all ruins which have been, or yet may be found, were caused by the Conqueror. Further, with regard to the castles, had there been any, they would most certainly have been noticed in Domesday, and it is most unlikely, knowing how very few existed in England at the Conquest, that five or six should have been clustered together in the Forest. The fact, too, of Rose’s finding “minute fragments of brick and mortar,” lumps of chalk, and pieces of slate bored with holes, simply proves that persons have, subsequently to the Normans, found the New Forest a most ungrateful soil. I may, perhaps, add that Mr Akerman, the well-known archæologist, when, a few years since, exploring the Roman potteries in the Forest (for which see chapter [xvii.]), in vain tried there, or in other parts, to find any traces of old buildings. (Archæologia, vol. xxxv. p. 97.)
[33]See Dr. Guest’s Early English Settlements in South Britain; Proceedings of the Archæological Institute, Salisbury volume, p. 57.
[34]“Nova Foresta, quæ linguâ Anglorum Ytene nuncupatur,” however, says Florence of Worcester (vol. ii. pp. 44, 45, ed. Thorpe); but the Keltic origin of the word is better.
[35]Ashley is connected with Esk and Usk, and refers to water rather than wood.—errata