A little over two miles away, and on the road to the Rufus Stone, is
Minstead church, which will make a different appeal to the
understanding stranger. This is (or was lately) a charming survival
from the days of our grandfathers with a three-decker, old room-like
pews, and double galleries. Malwood Lodge, close by, is a seat of the
Harcourt family, and not far away, about a mile and a half from
Minstead church, is the spot where William Rufus was killed by that
mysterious arrow which by accident or design, relieved England of a
tyrannical and wicked king. The "Rufus Stone," as the iron memorial is
called, with its terse and non-committal inscription was placed here
by a former Lord de la Warr. The body was conveyed to Winchester in
the cart of a charcoal-burner named Purkiss, and descendants of this
man, still following his occupation, were living within bow-shot of
the memorial one hundred years ago. The family "enjoyed for centuries
the right to the taking of all such wood as they could gather _by hook
or by crook_, dead branches, and what could be broken, but not cut by
the axe." It is said that the train of accidents that befell the
Conqueror's family in the Forest was considered by Hampshire folk to
be a just retribution for his iniquity in "making" it. His grandson
Henry, his second son Richard, and lastly his third son Rufus, all met
a violent death within its glades.

A short distance westwards we reach the "Compton Arms Hotel" and
Stoney Cross, from which an alternate route through beautiful
Boldrewood can be taken back to Lyndhurst or a long and lonely but
good road followed all the way to Ringwood, nine miles away on the
Avon. The traveller who would explore the recesses of the forest
remote from the beaten track should make his way north and west from
Stoney Cross through the sandy heaths of Eyeworth Walk and the