To create a new royal hunting ground in his English dominion,
William the Conqueror ruthlessly demolished villages, manors,
chapels, and parish churches throughout thirty miles of
country, along the coast side of Hampshire, from the Avon on
the west to Southampton Water on the east, and called this
wilderness of his making, The New Forest. His son William
Rufus was killed in it—which people thought to be a
judgment. The New Forest still exists and embraces no less
than 66,000 acres, extending over a district twenty miles by
fifteen in area, of woodland, heath, bog and rough pasture.
_J. C. Brown,
Forests of England,
part 1, chapter 2, D._