very well kept, though the family, it seems, is not much in this
country, having another estate and dwelling at Tottenham High
Cross, near London.
From hence in my way to the seaside I came to New Forest, of which
I have said something already with relation to the great extent of
ground which lies waste, and in which there is so great a quantity
of large timber, as I have spoken of already.
This waste and wild part of the country was, as some record, laid
open and waste for a forest and for game by that violent tyrant
William the Conqueror, and for which purpose he unpeopled the
country, pulled down the houses, and, which was worse, the churches
of several parishes or towns, and of abundance of villages, turning
the poor people out of their habitations and possessions, and
laying all open for his deer. The same histories likewise record
that two of his own blood and posterity, and particularly his
immediate successor William Rufus, lost their lives in this forest-
-one, viz., the said William Rufus, being shot with an arrow
directed at a deer which the king and his company were hunting, and
the arrow, glancing on a tree, changed his course, and struck the
king full on the breast and killed him. This they relate as a just
judgment of God on the cruel devastation made here by the
Conqueror. Be it so or not, as Heaven pleases; but that the king
was so killed is certain, and they show the tree on which the arrow
glanced to this day. In King Charles II.’s time it was ordered to
be surrounded with a pale; but as great part of the paling is down
with age, whether the tree be really so old or not is to me a great
question, the action being near seven hundred years ago.
I cannot omit to mention here a proposal made a few years ago to
the late Lord Treasurer Godolphin for re-peopling this forest,
which for some reasons I can be more particular in than any man now
left alive, because I had the honour to draw up the scheme and
argue it before that noble lord and some others who were
principally concerned at that time in bringing over–or, rather,
providing for when they were come over–the poor inhabitants of the
Palatinate, a thing in itself commendable, but, as it was managed,
made scandalous to England and miserable to those poor people.
Some persons being ordered by that noble lord above mentioned to
consider of measures how the said poor people should be provided
for, and whether they could be provided for or no without injury to
the public, the answer was grounded upon this maxim–that the
number of inhabitants is the wealth and strength of a kingdom,
provided those inhabitants were such as by honest industry applied
themselves to live by their labour, to whatsoever trades or
employments they were brought up. In the next place, it was
inquired what employments those poor people were brought up to. It
was answered there were husbandmen and artificers of all sorts,
upon which the proposal was as follows. New Forest, in Hampshire,
was singled out to be the place:-
Here it was proposed to draw a great square line containing four
thousand acres of land, marking out two large highways or roads
through the centre, crossing both ways, so that there should be a
thousand acres in each division, exclusive of the land contained in
the said cross-roads.
Then it was proposed to since out twenty men and their families,
who should be recommended as honest industrious men, expert in, or
at least capable of being instructed in husbandry, curing and
cultivating of land, breeding and feeding cattle, and the like. To
each of these should be parcelled out, in equal distributions, two
hundred acres of this land, so that the whole four thousand acres
should be fully distributed to the said twenty families, for which
they should have no rent to pay, and be liable to no taxes but such
as provided for their own sick or poor, repairing their own roads,
and the like. This exemption from rent and taxes to continue for