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