That there are defects in the church its greatest admirers would admit—the poorness of the roof, the harshness produced by the introduction of so much white, as also the bad colour of the bricks, and a heaviness which hangs over the clerestory windows of the nave. But, on the whole, it stands as a proof of the great advance during the last ten years of Art, as a cheering sign, too, that, amidst all the failures of Government, some taste and zeal are to be found amongst private persons.

There is nothing else of interest in the village. Once here busy scenes must have taken place, when the King came to hunt with his retinue of nobles; when down the street poured the train of bow-bearers, and foresters, and keepers, clad in doublets of Lincoln green, holding the dogs in leash. Then the woods rang with the notes of the bugle, and the twang of the bow-string sounded as the bolt, or the good English yard-shaft, brought down the quarry. Here, too, in the Civil War, were quartered grim Puritan soldiers, and prayers took the place of feasts.[113] Now, all is quiet. Nothing is to be seen but the Forest inviting us into its green glades.

The people of Lyndhurst ought, I always think, to be the happiest and most contented in England, for they possess a wider park and nobler trees than even Royalty. You cannot leave the place in any direction without going through the Forest. To the east lie the great woods of Denny and Ashurst; and to the north rise Cutwalk and Emery Down, looking across the vale to Minestead, and below them Kitt’s Hill, and the woods stretching away towards Alum Green. On the extreme west Mark Ash, and Gibb’s Hill, and Boldrewood, rise towering one after the other; whilst to the south stretch Gretnam and the Great and Little Huntley Woods, which the Millaford Brook skirts, here and there flowing out from the darkness of the trees into the sunshine, the banks scooped into holes, and held together only by the rope-work of roots.

These woods are always beautiful. Of their loveliness in spring we have spoken; and if you come to them in summer, then the first purple of the heather flaunts on every bank, and edges the sides of the gravel-pits with a crimson fringe; and the streams now idle, suffer themselves to be stopped up with water-lilies and white crowfoot, whilst the mock-myrtle dips itself far into the water. Then is it you may know something of the sweetness and the solitude of the woods, and wandering on, giving the day up to profitable idleness, can attain to that mood of which Wordsworth constantly sings, as teaching more than all books or years of study.

CHAPTER IX.
MINESTEAD AND RUFUS’S STONE.

About four miles off from Lyndhurst lie Minestead and Rufus’s Stone. There are three or four different roads to them. The most beautiful, though the longest, is over Emery Down, where, turning off to the left, you pass the woods of Kitt’s Hill, and James Hill. Then crossing Millaford Bridge, and skirting on each side of the road the beeches of Holme Hill, and passing through Boldrewood, you make your way eastward across the stream below the Withy Bed Hat, and go through the woods of Puckpits and Stonehard.

Another road to the Stone is through Minestead by a footpath which crosses Mr. Compton’s park, dotted with cottages, each with its garden full in the summer and autumn of flowers—yellow Aaron-rods, pink candy-tufts, colchicums, and marigolds, and tall sheaves of grey Michaelmas daisies.

In the village stands “The Faithful Servant,” copied from the well-known picture at Winchester College. A little farther on we ascend Stoneycross Hill, the village orchards full of Mary-apples and Morrisses mingling their blossoms, in the spring, with the green Forest oaks. As we reach the top, suddenly there opens out one long view. On the north-east rise the hills beyond Winchester; but the “White City” is hidden in their valley. To the east lies Southampton, with its houses by the water-side; and to the north, across the woods of Prior’s Acre, gleam the green Wiltshire downs lit up by the sunlight.

Close to us, among its beeches, lies Castle Malwood, with its single trench and Forest lodge, where tradition and poets say Rufus feasted before his death; and down in the valley stands the Stone which marks the spot where he is said to have fallen.

It will be as well to repeat the story, as told by the two Chroniclers who give the fullest account, with all its omens and apparitions. The King had gone to bed on the evening of the 1st of August, and was suddenly awoke by a fearful vision. He dreamt that he was bled, and the stream of blood, pouring up to heaven, clouded the very day. His attendants, hearing his cries to the Virgin, rushed in with lights, and stayed with him all that night. Morning dawned: and Robert Fitz Hamon, his special friend, came to him with another dream, dreamt also that very night by a foreign monk then staying at the court, who had seen the King enter a church, and there seize the rood, tearing apart its legs and arms. For a time the image bore the insult, but suddenly struck the King. He fell, and flames and smoke issued from his mouth, putting out the light of the stars. The Red King’s courage, however, had by this time returned. With a laugh, he cried, “He is a monk, and dreams for money like a monk: give him this,” handing Fitz Hamon a hundred shillings. Still the two dreams had their effect, and William hesitated to test their truth.[114] At dinner that day he drank more than usual. His spirits once more returned. He defied the dreams. In spite of their warnings, he determined to hunt. As he was preparing, his armourer approached with six brand-new arrows. Choosing out two, he cried, as he gave them to Walter Tiril, Lord of Poix and Pontoise, who had lately come from Normandy, “The best arrows to the best marksman.” The small hunting-party, consisting of his brother Henry, William of Breteuil, Walter Tiril, and Fitz Hamon, and a few more, set out. As they are leaving the courtyard, a monk from St. Peter’s Abbey at Gloucester arrives. He gives the King a letter from Serlo, the abbot. It told how a monk of that abbey had dreamt that he had seen the Saviour and all the host of heaven standing round the great white throne. Then, too, came the Virgin robed in light, and flung herself at the feet of her Son, and prayed Him, by his precious blood and agony on the cross, to take pity on the English; prayed Him, too, as He was judge of all men, and avenger of all wickedness, to punish the King. The Saviour answered her, “You must be patient and wait: due retribution will in time befall the wicked.” The King read it and laughed. “Does Serlo,” he asked, “think that I believe the visions of every snoring monk? Does he take me for an Englishman, who puts faith in the dreams of every old woman?”[115] With this the party once more sets out into the Forest, the woods still green with all their deep summer foliage.

So they hunted all that noon and afternoon. The sun was now setting. Tiril and the King were alone.[116] A stag bounded by: the King shot and slightly wounded the quarry. On, though, it still bounded in the full light of the setting sun. The King stood watching it, shading his eyes with his hands. At that moment another deer broke cover. Tiril this time shot, and the shaft lodged itself in the King’s breast.[117] He fell without a word or groan, vainly trying to pull out the arrow, which broke short in his hand.

Thus perished William the Red. Tiril leapt on his horse. Henry galloped to Winchester, and the other nobles to their houses. One exception was there. William of Breteuil, following hard upon Henry to Winchester, honourably declared the rights of the absent Robert, to whom both Henry and himself had sworn fealty. William’s body was brought on a cart to the cathedral, the blood from his wound reddening the road.[118] There the next morning[119] he was buried, unlamented, unknelled, and unaneled.[120]

So runs the story as told by the Chroniclers. And to this day popular tradition not only repeats their tale, but points to the places associated with the event. Below our feet lies the lonely glen of Canterton, where the King is said to have fallen. The oak from which, as the legend runs, the arrow glanced, is long since dead, but a stone marks its site, now capped over with a hideous cast-iron case.[121] In the woods and in the village of Minestead still live some of the descendants of Purkess, who is reported to have carried the bleeding corpse in his charcoal-cart to Winchester along the road now known as the King’s Road. Twelve miles away, on the extreme south-west boundary of the Forest, close to the Avon, stands a smithy, on the site of the one where, the legend says, Walter Tiril’s horse was shod, and which, for that reason, to this day pays a yearly fine to the Crown: and the water close by, where the fugitive passed, is still called Tyrrel’s Ford. And Rufus lies in Winchester Cathedral, his bones now mixed with those of Canute; and under a marble tomb, in the south aisle of the presbytery, sleeps his brother Richard, slain also like himself in the Forest.

So runs the story, unquestioned save here and there by some few faint doubts.[122] As to the tradition, I think we may at once set aside its testimony. The value of mere tradition in history weighs, or ought to weigh, nothing. Here and there tradition may be true in a very general sense, as when it says the Isle of Wight was once joined to Hampshire; but it is never particular in its dates, and is ever in too much hurry to compare facts. Tradition, as often as not, kills the murderer instead of the murdered; and makes the man who built the place to have been born there. Tradition is, in fact, the history of the vulgar, and the stumbling-block of the half-learned.

We will look at the broader bearings of the case. The first thing which strikes us is the fact that two other very near relatives of the Red King, his brother and his nephew, also lost their lives by so-called accidents in the New Forest. If we are to believe the Chroniclers, his brother Richard met his death whilst hunting there, according to one narrative, by a pestilential blast—surely, at the least, a very unsatisfactory account;[123] though, by another version, from the effects of a blow against a tree.[124] His nephew Richard was either wounded by an arrow through the neck, or caught by the boughs of a tree and strangled—a still more improbable death;[125] whilst, according to Florence of Worcester, he was killed by the arrow of one of his own knights.[126] We will only here pause to notice not only the extreme improbability, but the contradictory statements in both cases, which will not, of course, increase the value of the same evidence concerning Rufus.[127]

And now we will examine the version of his death. History is at all times subjective enough, but becomes far more so when written by unfriendly Chroniclers, who have good reasons for suppressing the truth. The story reads at the very first glance too much like a romance. In the first place, we have no less than three dreams, which are always effects rather than causes—after-thoughts rather than prophecies, well fitted to suit the superstition of the times, and to deceive the crowd. Then, too, we find the old device of the armourer craving the King to take six brand-new arrows, by one of which at the hand of his friend he is fated to fall on the very spot which his father had laid waste, and where he is said to have destroyed a church.

It may of course be urged that all this is in accordance with what we know of the eternal power of the moral laws, that the sins of the fathers are ever visited upon the sons to the third and fourth generations, and that time ever completes the full circle of retribution. But the flaw is, that this special judgment is too special. “Divine vengeance” and “judgment of God,” the Chroniclers cry out one after another, and this is thought sufficient to account for three so-called accidental deaths. The moral laws, however, never fall so directly as they are here represented. Their influence is more oblique. The lightning of justice does not immediately follow each peal of suffering.

Leaving, however, the Chroniclers’ views to themselves, let us look further at some of the facts which peep out in the narrative. Why, in the first place, we naturally ask, if the King was shot by accident, did his friends and attendants desert him? Why was he brought home in a cart, drawn by a wretched jade, the blood, not even staunched, flowing from the wound, clotting the dust on the road? Why, too, the indecent haste of his funeral? Why, afterwards, was no inquiry as to his death made? Why, too, was Tiril’s conduct not investigated? These questions are difficult to answer, except upon one supposition.

Let us note, also, that they are all ecclesiastics, to whom the revelations of the King’s speedy end had been made known, and that their special favourite, Henry, succeeded to the throne in spite of his elder brother’s right. It is, certainly, too, something more than singular that when the banished Anselm should visit Hugh, Abbot of Cluny, that the Abbot should tell him that during the past night he had seen William summoned before God and sentenced to damnation, and that the King’s death immediately followed: that further, on the next day, when he went to Lyons, his chaplain should be twice told by a youth of the death of William before it took place.[128] More than singular, too, are those words of Fulchered, spoken so openly and so daringly, “The bow of God’s vengeance is bent against the wicked; and the arrow swift to wound is already drawn out of the quiver.”[129]

Either all these persons were prophets, or accessories to the murder, or—for there is one more solution—the Chroniclers invented this portion of the story. If we admit this last supposition, we cannot receive the other parts of the narrative without the greatest suspicion. We have almost a sufficient warrant to read them in an exactly opposite sense to what they were intended to bear.

Let us remember, also, that Flambard, Rufus’s prime minister, who was universally hated by the clergy, and who had lately banished Godric, of Christchurch, into Normandy, was instantly stripped of his possessions by Henry, and Godric reinstated, and the banished Anselm recalled; and, lastly, and most important of all, that Tiril, who had just arrived from Normandy, was a friend of Anselm’s,[130] and, further, that Alanus de Insulis, better known as le Docteur Universel, who lived not long after the event, actually says that in his opinion it was caused by treachery.[131] Surely all these facts and coincidences point but one way. All tend to show, as plainly as possible, that Rufus fell by no chance, but by a conspiracy of his prelates, who held the crozier in one, and the battle-axe in the other hand.[132] The cause of their hatred is at once supplied by his refusing to pay St. Peter’s pence—denying the Pope’s supremacy—banishing Anselm—promoting Flambard—holding all the bishoprics and other offices which fell vacant[133]—by his cruelties to their different orders at Canterbury and Crowland, and throughout England, whose enmity died not with his death, but made them believe that the tower of Winchester Cathedral fell because they allowed him to be buried in its nave.

Reading, in the Chroniclers, the life of the Red King seems like rather reading a series of plots against it, not by the English, who were too thoroughly cowed to make the slightest resistance, but by his own prelates and barons.[134] His uncle Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, headed the first rebellion against him, as soon as he usurped the throne. William, Bishop of Durham, his own Minister, conspired against him. Bishop Gosfrith, with his nephew Robert, Earl of Northumberland, rebelled in the west. Roger Montgomery rose on the Welsh Marches. Roger Bigod in the eastern, and Hugo of Grentemesnil in the Midland Counties hoisted the flag of revolt.[135] Such was England at the beginning of his reign. In 1096, his own godfather, William of Aldrey, justly or unjustly, was accused of treason, and died on the gallows.[136] William, Count of Eu, kinsman to the King, suffered a worse fate for the same crime. His steward, William, also a kinsman of the King’s, was hung on a rood. Eudes, Count of Champagne, forfeited his lands. Others not only shared the same fate, but were deprived of their eyesight.[137] His northern barons, headed by Robert of Mowbray, goaded to desperation by the Forest Laws, rose in revolt. Roger of Yvery, son of the Conqueror’s favourite, led the Midland barons, and was obliged to fly, and all his vast estates, close to the New Forest, forfeited. Normandy, from whence Tiril had just come, swarmed with outlawed enemies, both churchmen and laymen. It was the nest where all the plots could be safely hatched.

Knowing all this, knowing, too, that the conspiracies became more frequent as his tyranny increased, we can scarcely avoid coming to but one conclusion as to his death.

It might suit the policy of the times to throw the guilt on Tiril, but Tiril certainly did not shoot the arrow. We have his own most solemn declaration to various people, and especially, not once but often, to Suger, the well-known Abbot of St. Denis, when he had nothing to gain or lose, that he had on the day of the King’s death not only not entered that part of the Forest, but had not so much as even seen him.[138]

Tiril, however, was certainly implicated in the plot. His haste to leave the country arose, probably, not so much from a wish to escape as to convey the news of the success to Normandy: and popular tradition mistaking the cause, with its usual inaccuracy, fixed on the wrong person as the assassin. In after years, however, from some scruple of conscience, he expiated his share in the murder by a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

Who shot the fatal arrow we know not, and, perhaps, shall never know. We must not expect to get truth in history,—only, at the best, some faint glimmering. All is here confusion and darkness. John of Salisbury, who lived about the middle of the twelfth century, says it was as little known who killed the King as who slew Julian the Apostate.[139] The very spot where he fell is doubtful. One thing, however, seems certain, that he was slain, not, as the Chroniclers say, because his father made the New Forest, but through his own cruelties and excesses, by which he outraged both friend and foe.

It is not single passages which alone leave this impression, but still more the cumulative force of the evidence. The fact that all were gainers by his death, and the general abhorrence of the tyrant, are in themselves strong reasons. Not one, but all parties were bound together against him by the strongest of covenants—hatred. The marked and bitter prophecies, which would not have been uttered were not their fulfilment ensured,—the suspicious silence on all important points,—the pretended dreams and omens,—the abandonment of the body,—the want of any inquiry into the cause of death,—the connection between the Church party and Anselm with Henry I., and Anselm’s connection again with Tiril, all serve to show the depth and darkness of the plot.

His life throws the best light on his death. Read by it, by the extortions and atrocities which he committed, by the universal hatred in which he was held, the conclusion is inevitable. Years of violence were the prelude to a violent end. The many failures in open revolt seem only to have taught the lesson of greater caution. And treachery at last succeeded, where plain courage had so often failed.

Direct proof of the murder cannot be had, and must not be expected. Every one was interested in keeping that a secret by which all alike profited. To have declared it, would have covered the Crown with disgrace, and stained the hands of the Church.

Their own absurdities and contradictions form the best refutation of the common accounts. In details they are irreconcilable with each other. According to one, the King was alone with Tiril; to another, with all his attendants. One narrative declares that the arrow glanced from a boar, a second from a stag, a third from a tree. Even if we accept them, then either the power of prophecy lasted much longer than is commonly supposed, or, as we have said, the clergy were accessories to the murder;—we have no other choice. The last of these solutions is fatal to the common belief; and very few persons would, I suppose, venture upon the first. Nevertheless, the monk of Gloucester’s dream was not yet to be fulfilled. The hour was not yet at hand for England’s deliverance. As the Parliamentary party said in Charles the First’s time—“Things must become worse before they can mend.” England had, therefore, to undergo a tyranny for more than a century longer—till the evil became its own cure. Good was at length accomplished. Out of all the woe and wretchedness came the Bill of Rights and the Charta de Forestâ.

CHAPTER X.
THE NORTHERN PART.—STONEY-CROSS, BRAMBLE HILL, FRITHAM, BENTLEY, EYEWORTH, SLODEN.

If any one wishes to know the beauty of the Forest in autumn, let him see the view from the high ridge at Stoney-Cross. Here the air blows off the Wiltshire Downs finer and keener than anywhere else. Here, on all sides, stretch woods and moors. Here, in the latter end of August, the three heathers, one after another, cover every plain and holt with their crimson glory, mixed with the flashes of the dwarf furze. And a little later the maples are dyed, yellow and russet, by the autumn rains, and the beeches are scorched to a fiery red with the first frost, and the oaks renew, but deeper and more gloriously, the golden lights of spring, till the great woods of Prior’s Acre and Daneshill burn with colour; every gleam of sunshine, and every passing shadow, touching them with fresher and stranger beauty.

To the east, about two miles along the Southampton Road, lies the village of Cadenham, famous for its oak, which, like the Glastonbury thorn, buds on Christmas Eve. The popular tradition in the neighbourhood runs, that, as the weather is harder, it shows more leaves, and, refusing the present chronology, only buds on Old Christmas night. As in most things, there is some little truth in the story. Doubtless, in some of the mild winters which visit Hampshire, the tree shows a few buds, as at that time I have seen others do in various parts of the Forest. Of course, they are all nipped by the first approach of severe weather, which, however, seldom happens on the warm south-west coast till the new year.

Down in the valley to the left of Rufus’s Stone rise the woods of the Long Beeches, and Prior’s Acre, and Daneshill or Dean’s Hell, where the word Hell (from helan, to cover) means nothing more than the dark place, like the Hellbecks in Yorkshire.[140] Beaten paths and walks stretch into the woods in every direction. Perhaps one of the prettiest is over Coalmeer Brook, and then through the thick beeches of Coalmeer Wood, where the honey buzzard builds, till we come to the King’s Gairn stream, where the Bracklesham Clays, teeming with fossils, may, by digging, be reached.[141]

Brook Common now opens before us. At its farther end stands Brook Wood, with its fine hollies and durmast oaks (Quercus sessiliflora). Passing the High Beeches to our left, we reach Shepherd’s Gutter, a small stream, where the Bracklesham beds again crop out with their blue and slate-coloured clays.

Going on through more woods, and then by clumps of old hollies and yews, we come to Bramble Hill. Perhaps, just above the Lodge, on the top of the hill, we gain the most extensive view of the Forest. Before us spreads one vast sea of woods, broken in the front by Malwood Ridge, and Brochis Hill, and then rolling its flood of green over Minestead Valley, and rising again wave-like, at Whitley, till lost among the moors, whilst the Isle of Wight hills seam the blue sky with their dark outlines.

The village of Bramshaw, just a little way beyond, stands partly in both Hampshire and Wiltshire, and forms the Forest boundary. From its woods in former times the shingles for roofing Salisbury Cathedral were cut. Its church, although prettily situated, is scarcely worth seeing. Only an Early-English window at the east end, and an arch on the south side, remain of the old building, now defaced by every variety of modern ugliness. In the churchyard stands a fine yew; and a buttress on the north side is completely covered with the lovely common spleenwort.

Coming back, however, to Stoney-Cross, we will now go westward. Stoney-Cross itself consists of but a few tumbledown cottages, inhabited principally by the Forest workmen. Just beyond the last of them let us stop for a moment. To the south stretch more woods—Stonehard, with its views across the valley, to the oaks of Wick and the plain of Acres Down, looking over Rhinefield and the valley of the Osmanby Ford, beyond Wootton, to the Needle Rocks, mass upon mass of woods. To the right of it lies Puckpits, where the badger breeds, and the raven used to build, and where still on a summer morning the honey buzzard comes flying up from Mark Ash, and, circling for hours round the trees, will again fly back to its favourite haunt.

All these woods there are for rambles, flushed in the spring with wood-anemones and wood-sorrel, set in the green moss and the greener heather of the bilberry. Nowhere, too, in the Forest, than in these woods, have I seen more lovely sunsets. Through some deep-cut oriel of the trees have I watched the sun begin to sink, each moment burning brighter, and then suddenly its great brand of fire would fall, reddening each tree trunk, and crimson billows of clouds come rolling eastward.

Instead of following the Ringwood Road, beautiful as that is in many parts, especially at Woody Bratley, with its old thorn trees, we will turn off to the right. To the west now rises Ocknell Wood, and its clump of firs, a well-known landmark, and beyond that lies the new Slufter Inclosure, and Bratley Plain, with its great graveyard of barrows. In front of us stretches the East Fritham Plain, with its three barrows, locally called “butts,” the central known as Reachmore. At the second mound we will go into North Bentley Wood, following the wood-cutter’s track. Very wild and unfrequented is this. Here a stray deer will bound across the road; and sometimes a small herd of as many as six or seven are browsing on the ivy clinging to some tree just felled, startled at the slightest sound, and trooping off down the glades. The grey hen rises up at our feet from the heather; and, as we enter the wood, the woodpecker shrieks out his shrill laugh, whilst a buzzard is heavily sailing over the trees.

The road winds on through the valley amongst oaks flecked with silver flakes of moss, broken here and there by open glades and green spaces of fern. At last, we reach Queen’s North Lawn, which leads us on the right to Fritham, standing on the hill top. In the valley below lies Eyeworth Lodge, with the powder mills lately built; the Ivare of Domesday, and still so called by the peasantry, afterwards Yvez, where Roger Beteston, in the reign of Henry III., held some land by the service of finding litter for the King’s bed and hay for his horse whenever he came here to hunt.[142]

Fritham is thoroughly in the Forest; and few spots can equal it in interest. It may be the very place where Rufus fell:[143] but whether or no, close round it lie the barrows of the Kelt, and the potteries of the Roman, covering acres of ground, at Island’s Thorn and Crockle, and Sloden and Black Bar, with the banks which mark the sites of the workmen’s houses.[144] Close round it, too, encircling it on all sides, rise the woods of Studley, with their great beeches, and Eyeworth, famous for its well. Going along the West Fritham Plain we come to Sloden, with its thick wood of yews, standing, massive and black, in all their depth of foliage, mixed, in loveliest contrast, with clumps of whitebeams. Below runs the brook, flowing under Amberwood, and winding among dark groups of hollies, lost at last in the deep gorge, shut in by the hills of Goreley and Charlford.

The best way to reach Fordingbridge is either to go by Ashley Lodge, and so through Pitt’s Wood, and between the high, bare, half mountainous hills of Chilly and Blissford, coming out upon the turnpike-road near Blissford Gate; or to follow the side of the Amberwood stream towards some scattered houses, called Ogdens.

Here we leave the Forest, and its moors and woods, and, mounting Goreley Hill, see below us the church of Fordingbridge, and the Avon winding among its meadows. To the south Hengistbury Head lifts itself up in the distant horizon; and beyond it again, but more to the west, stretches the blue line of the Portland Hills. To the north swell the rounded forms of the Wiltshire downs, and the spire of Salisbury starts out from the midst, and behind it towers the mound of Old Sarum.

CHAPTER XI.
THE VALLEY OF THE AVON.—FORDINGBRIDGE, CHARFORD, BREAMORE, IBBESLEY, ELLINGHAM, RINGWOOD, SOPLEY.

The Valley of the Avon should certainly be seen, both because large parts of its manors and villages once stood in the Forest, as also for the contrast which it now affords to the neighbouring Forest scenery. Nothing can be so different to the moors we have just left as the Valley. Though close to them, you might imagine you were suddenly transported into one of the Midland Counties, and were walking by the side of the Warwickshire, instead of the Wiltshire Avon. In the place of wild heathery commons and furzy holts, deep lanes wind along by comfortable homesteads, thatched with Dorsetshire reed. Instead, too, of dark oak and beech woods, thick hedges are white in the spring with the scattered spray of the blackthorn, and orchards glow with their crimson wreaths of flowers.

Fordingbridge, formerly nothing else but Forde, now known to all fishermen for its pike and trout, in former days held the high-road into the Forest. On the bridge the lord of the manor, during the fence months, was obliged to mount guard, and stop all suspected persons, who could only on the north-west leave the Forest this way.[145]

In Domesday its manor possessed a church and two mills, rented at 14s. 2d. Though all its beech and oak woods, worth, on account of the pannage for swine, 20s. a year, were afforested, only three virgates of land were taken. Yet, notwithstanding this loss, it still paid the same rental as in Edward the Confessor’s reign.

The old hospital, dedicated to St. John, was dissolved by Henry VI., and its revenues annexed to St. Cross, near Winchester.[146] The church stands on the extreme south-west side of the town, with its avenue of limes, and its yews, now spoilt by being clipt. The windows of the nave are Early Decorated, whilst those of the clerestory are Perpendicular. Against the north pillar of the south chancel arch is fixed a late brass. The upper part of the east window is spoilt by its ugly Tudor headings, and the lower portion by the Commandment tables. The high-pitched open Perpendicular roof of the north chancel, however, possesses some real interest, both on account of its height and its richness of detail,—the tie-beams faced with mouldings, and the spaces above ornamented with tracery, and the braces below also carved, and the purlins enriched with bosses, whilst carved projecting figures bear up the whole.

Before, however, the traveller leaves Fordingbridge he should go to Sandyballs and Castle Hill, where are still the remains of a camp, and traces of habitations, probably used in turn by Kelts, Romans, and West-Saxons, and where, perhaps, Ambrosius entrenched himself before the battle of Charford. From here is one of the best views of the Valley. Behind us stands Godshill inclosure, and the Forest with its dark moors and woods. Below winds the Avon, with its orchards nestling on the hill side, stretching its silver coil of waters along the green meadows, the sunlight gleaming on each bend and turn.

Looking up the stream, the village of Wood Green, and the woods of Hale, and the two Charfords, one by one appear. Charford is especially noticeable, formerly Cerdeford, without doubt the Cerdices-ford of The Chronicle and of Florence. Here it was for the last time that the gallant Ambrosius Aurelianus, Prince Natan-Leod, father of the great Arthur of Mediæval legends, after his many defeats, rallied the forlorn hope of the Romanized Kelts. Here, too, he fell on the greensward by the side of the Avon, with five thousand of his men, and was buried at Amesbury, which still preserves his name. Of the battle we know nothing—know only this, that the Keltic power in Wessex was broken, and that from henceforth the land from Winchester to Charford was called Natan-lea.[147]

Close to Charford lies Breamore,—the last of the Forest manors to the north-west mentioned in Domesday[148]—with the ruins of its fine Elizabethan hall, burnt down only a few years since, and its church standing in a graveyard full of old yews and laurels. The church has been most shamefully disfigured—stuccoed outside, and whitewashed within. Still it is worth seeing. A Norman doorway, another proof that the Conqueror did not destroy every church in the district, stands inside the south porch. A piscina, and brackets for images, still remain in the chancel.

Returning to Fordingbridge we pass through Burgate, formerly belonging to Beaulieu Abbey, where the dogs of the Lord of the Manor, like those of the Abbot of the Monastery, were allowed to go “unlawed.” The base of the old village cross still remains, but the head was, not long ago, broken to pieces to mend the roads.

Our way from Fordingbridge lies by the side of the Avon, with the new chapel of Hyde or Hungerford standing on the top of the Forest range of hills. The road soon brings us to Ibbesley, the prettiest of villages in the Valley, with its cottages by the road-side, and their gardens of roses and poppies and sweet pease, and their porches thatched with honeysuckle. Three great elms overhang the river, spanned by the single arch of its bridge; whilst the stream pours sparkling and foaming over the weir into the water-meadows, and in the distance the tower of Harbridge rises out from its trees.

The sketch which is given at the end of this chapter is taken lower down in the fields, and shows another view not so well known. But the whole river is here full of beauty, winding, scarce knowing where, among the flat meadows, one stream flowing one way, and one another, and then all suddenly uniting, coming up with their joined force against the steep banks, dark in the shade of the trees; and, being repulsed, flowing away again into the meadows, white with flocks of swans, and fenced in by green hedges of rushes and yellow flags.

Going on we reach the avenue of elms which brings us to the Ellingham cross roads. Turning up the lane to the left we presently come to Moyles Court, just on the boundary of the Forest, looking out upon the woods of Newlyns and Chartley. Here lived Alice Lisle, and here are shown the hiding-places where, after the battle of Sedgemoor, she concealed Hicks and Nelthorpe. The house is sadly out of repair; the oak floors, and part of the fine old staircase, and the wainscoting of many of the rooms have been taken away; the old tapestry is destroyed and the iron gates rusted and broken. Still the private chapel remains, with its panelling and carved string-course of heads, and its “Ecce Homo” over the place where the altar once stood.[149]

The story of Alice Lisle needs not to be told. She was found guilty of high treason not by the jury, but by the judge,—the infamous Jeffreys,—and was condemned, for an act of Christian kindness, to worse than a felon’s death.

In Ellingham churchyard, close to the south porch, stands a plain brick tomb under which she, and her daughter Anne Hartell, lie, with the simple words, “Alicia Lisle dyed the second of September, 1685;” and round the tomb, weaving its ever green chaplet, grows the little rue-leaved spleenwort.

But a nobler monument has been raised to her in our Houses of Parliament. In the Commons’ corridor she stands, bent with age, resting on her staff, with a gentle placidness shining in her face, unmoved by any fears for the future, but caring only to do what her heart feels to be right; whilst on the opposite wall, painted by the same hand, lives another of those Englishwomen of whom we may be proud,—Jane Lane, who, in her loyalty, would as willingly have sacrificed herself for one of the most ungrateful of princes, as Alice Lisle for the poor Puritans.

And about eight miles away, across the Avon, in Dorsetshire, between two fields on Woodlands Farm, runs an old-fashioned double hedge, the central ditch choked up with hazel, and holly, and the common brake. About midway down, half in the ditch and half in the hedge, stands a pollarded ash, now bored into holes by the woodpeckers. This is Monmouth’s Ash, and close to it, in the ditch, the duke, the miserable cause of so much misery, was seized, hid among the fern and brambles.[150]

To the ecclesiologist the little church of Ellingham (Adeling’s hamlet) is full of interest. Within stands the old covered carved pew of Moyles Court, and a monument to one of its former owners. The plain rood-screen, with the stand for the hour-glass, and the marks of the pulpit still remain, formerly, as we can still see, painted blue like the chancel. On the south wall traces of the staircase to the rood-loft, as well as the entrance from the outside, are also still visible. In the chancel the Early-English windows have been sadly mutilated. Over the communion-table hangs a picture of the Day of Judgment, plundered from some church in Port St. Mary, in the Bay of Cadiz, whose bad execution is only exceeded by its indecent materialism. In the south chancel wall is a double piscina. On the walls above the rood-screen, the twenty-first verse of the twenty-fourth chapter of Proverbs, and the twenty-fourth verse of the third chapter of Galatians, according to the version of the Geneva Bible, are roughly painted.[151]

As in all the other churches of the district, the churchwardens have here from time to time shown their natural attachment to ugliness. The Early-English triplet at the east end has been blocked up, the gravestones in the chancel defaced, and a brick porch patched on at the south side.

The road now winds on by low water-meadows, pastured by herds of cattle, past Blashford Green, till we reach Ringwood, the Rinwede of Domesday.[152] Here, at the Grammar School, was Stillingfleet educated. Here Monmouth wrote his three craven letters to James, the Queen Dowager, and the Lord Treasurer, imploring them to save that life which it was a disgrace to own.

The old church has been pulled down, and a new one, modelled in every particular after it, has been built on its site. A church ought doubtless to tell its own date by its style. Yet it is far better that we should copy a moderately good specimen than increase the number of modern abortions. At all events, this is faithfully restored, though utterly spoilt by the heavy galleries which flank it on every side. The Early-English chancel, with its recessed arcade, springing from polished shafts of black Purbeck marble, well shows the beauty of the original design; whilst, on the chancel floor, lies a fine brass of the fifteenth century to John Prophete, which, however, has been most shamefully defaced. The body is robed in a cope broidered with figures of saints—St. Michael, and the Virgin and Child, St. Peter and St. Paul, St. Catharine and St. Faith, St. George and St. Wenefride. The head, with the hood thrown back, rests on a cushion, whilst the cope is clasped with a morse, enriched with an effigy of the Saviour, crowned with a halo of light.