THE NEW FOREST AND ROMSEY ABBEY
All day I went through the Forest, sometimes by green rides, enchanted
still, such as those down which Lancelot rode with Guinevere, talking
of love, sometimes over heaths wild and desolate such as that which
knew the bitterness of Lear, sometimes through the greenwood, ancient
British woodland, silent now, where the hart was once at home in the
shade, and where at every turn one might expect to come upon Rosalind
in her boy's dress, and think to hear from some glade the words of
Amiens' song:
Under the greenwood tree
Who loves to lie with me,
And turn his merry note
Unto the sweet bird's throat;
Come hither, come hither, come hither....
There are days in life of which it can only be said, that they are
blessed; golden days, upon which, looking back, the sun seems to shine;
they dazzle in the memory. Such was the day I spent in the byways of
Holmsley and Burley, in the upper valleys of Avon water, Ober water and
Black water, forest streams; in the silent woods, where all day long
the sun showered its gold, sprinkling the deep shade with flowers and
blossoms of light, where there was no wind but only the sighing of the
woods, no sound but the whisper of the leaves or the rare flutter of a
bird's wings, no thoughts but joyful thoughts filling the heart with
innocence.
Who doth ambition shun,
And loves to live i' the sun,
Seeking the food he eats
And pleased with what he gets;
Come hither, come hither, come hither....
At evening I came to Lyndhurst.
Lyndhurst is the capital of the Forest; as its name implies it was
established in a wood of limes, a tree said to have been introduced
into England only in the sixteenth century. It is already spoken of in
the tenth century Anglo-Saxon ballad of the Battle of Brunanburh!
Athelstan king,
Lord among earls,
Bracelet bestower and
Baron of barons;
He with his brother
Edmund Atheling
Gaining a lifelong
Glory in battle.
Slew with the sword-edge,
There by Brunanburh,
Brake the shield wall,
_Hew'd the lindenwood_,
Hack'd the battleshield,
Sons of Edward with hammered brands.
Oak, beech, and holly, which so largely make up the woodland of the New
Forest we have always had in England, but the limes which named
Lyndhurst it is said we owe to someone else, and if so it can only be
to the Roman.
What the Forest was when the Romans administered the land we know not;
but in Anglo-Saxon times it was doubtless a royal hunting ground,
_terra regis_ and _silva regis_, for spoiling which by fire as for
killing the game therein fines must be paid. These royal hunting
grounds, of which the great Forest in Hampshire was certainly not the
least, only became legal "forests" with the Conquest, when they were
placed under a new Forest law of extraordinary harshness, which even in
the Conqueror's time indeed demanded an eye or a hand for the taking
of game, and in the days of the Red King the life of a man for the life
of a beast.
The Conqueror, as we know, greatly enlarged the old "royal hunting
ground" here in Hampshire when he made the New Forest, and that act of
his which brought an immensely larger area than of old under a new and
incredibly harsher forest law gradually produced a legend of
devastation and depopulation here which, as I have already said, can no
longer be accepted as true. Henry of Huntingdon (1084?-1155) asserts
that "to form the hunting ground of the New Forest he (William) caused
churches and villages to be destroyed, and, driving out the people,
made it a habitation for deer." It is true that the Conqueror forged a
charter purporting to date from Canute in which the king's sole right
to take beasts of chase was asserted, and to this he appealed as
justifying his harsh new laws; but it is untrue that he depopulated
and destroyed a thriving district to make a wilderness for the red
deer. "We shall find," says Warner, "that the lands comprised in this
tract (the New Forest) appear from their low valuation in the time of
the Confessor to have been always unproductive in comparison with
other parts of the kingdom; and that notwithstanding this pretended
devastation they sunk (in many instances) but little in their value
after their afforestment. So that the fact seems to have been, William,
finding this tract in a barren state and yielding but little profit,
and being strongly attached to the pleasures of the chase, converted it
into a royal forest, without being guilty of those violences to the
inhabitants of which Henry of Huntingdon, Malmesbury, Walter Mapes, and
others complain."
Of this great New Forest, Lyndhurst was made the capital and the
administrative centre, and such it is still. In Domesday Book we read:
"The King himself holds Lyndhurst, which appertained to Amesbury,
which is of the King's farm."
The King granted a small part, namely, one virgate to "Herbert the
Forester," before 1086, and this Herbert is generally supposed to have
been the ancestor of those Lyndhursts who for so long held the
wardenship of the Forest. The King's house, a fine building of Queen
Anne's time, is the successor of the old royal lodge at least as old as
the fourteenth century, and is now occupied by the Deputy Surveyor of
the Forest. In the Verderers' Hall close by, the forest courts of the
verderers are still held. There, too, may be seen the old dock, certain
trophies of the chase and "the stirrup-iron of William Rufus," really
the seventeenth century gauge "for the dogs allowed to be kept in the
forest without expeditation, the 'lawing' being carried out on all
'great dogs' that could not pass through the stirrup."
Lyndhurst itself, as we see it to-day, is devoid of interest; even the
church dates but from 1863, and its greatest treasure is the wall-
painting by Lord Leighton of the Wise and Foolish Virgins in the
chancel. A church, a chapelry of Minstead, certainly stood here in the
thirteenth century, but was destroyed, and a Georgian building erected
--in its turn to give place to the church we see.
Lyndhurst, though almost without interest itself, is undoubtedly the
best centre for exploring the Forest, or, at any rate, perhaps the most
beautiful and certainly the most interesting parts of it. So by many a
byway I went northward to Minstead in Malwood, where I found a most
curious church, rather indeed a house than a church, with dormer
windows in the roof, an enormous three-decker pulpit within, galleries,
and two great pews, one with a fireplace, and I know not what other
quaint rubbish of the eighteenth century. All this I found enchanting,
and more especially because the nave and chancel seemed to me to be
originally of the thirteenth century, and certainly the font is Norman.
But the church with its eighteenth-century tower is perhaps the most
amazing conglomeration of the work of all periods since the twelfth
century to be found in southern England.
From Minstead I went on up the Bartley water to Stone Cross, nearly
four hundred feet over the Forest, from which by good fortune I saw the
mighty Abbey of Romsey in the valley of the Test, where I intended to
sleep. Then I went down past Castle Malwood to where stands Rufus'
Stone. There I read:
"Here stood the oak-tree on which an arrow shot by Sir
Walter Tyrrell at a stag glanced and struck King William II.,
surnamed Rufus, on the breast, of which stroke he instantly
died on the 2nd August 1100.
"King William II., surnamed Rufus, being slain as before related,
was laid in a cart belonging to one Purkess and drawn
from hence to Winchester and buried in the cathedral church
of that city.
"That where an event so memorable had happened might
not hereafter be unknown this stone was set up by John Lord
Delaware who had seen the tree growing in this place anno
1745.
"This stone having been much mutilated and the inscriptions
on the three sides defaced, this more durable memorial
with the original inscription was erected in the year 1841 by
him. Sturges Bourne, warden."
The memorial and inscription are of iron.
The most famous thing that ever befell in the New Forest was this
strange murder or misfortune which cost the Red King his life. It
haunts the whole forest, and rightly understood fills it with meaning
and can never have been or be far from the thoughts of anyone who
wanders there, even as I have done in the excellent days of Spring.
[Illustration: IN THE NEW FOREST]
No less than three members of the Conqueror's family were killed in the
New Forest; first Richard, one of his sons, then another Richard,
bastard son of Duke Robert of Normandy, this in May 1100; and in August
of the same year, his son and successor William, surnamed Rufus. All
these deaths are said to have been caused by accidents, all were caused
by arrows; it is a strange thing.
All we really know about the death of William Rufus may be found in the
English "Chronicle." "On the morrow was the King William shot off with
an arrow from his own men in hunting." Whether the arrow, as tradition
has it, was shot by Walter Tyrrel or no, whether it was aimed at the
King or no, can never now be known. The most graphic account of the
affair is given to us by Ordericus Vitalis, who, however, was not only
not present, but at best can have been but a child at the time, for he
died in 1150. For all that he doubtless had access to sources of which
we now know nothing, and the whole atmosphere of his story suggests
that, as we might expect, the King was murdered because of his general
harshness and oppression, perhaps especially exemplified in his Forest
Law. It was he and not the Conqueror who demanded the life of a man for
that of a beast; his father had been content with an eye or a limb.
It would seem, according to Ordericus, that the whole country was full
of stories of terrible visions concerning the end of the King long
before his sudden death. Henry of Huntingdon, for instance, tells us
that "blood had been seen to spring from the ground in Berkshire," and
adds that "the King was rightly cut off in the midst of his injustice,"
for "England could not breathe under the burdens laid upon it."
Ordericus himself says that "terrible visions respecting him were seen
in the monasteries and cathedrals by the clergy of both classes, and
becoming the talk of the vulgar in the market-places and churchyards,
could not escape the notice of the King."
He then gives a particular instance: "A certain monk of good
repute and still better life, who belonged to the Abbey of St Peter at
Gloucester, related that he had a dream in the visions of the night to
this effect: 'I saw,' he said, 'the Lord Jesus seated on a lofty
throne, and the glorious host of heaven, with the company of the
saints, standing round. But while, in my ecstasy, I was lost in wonder,
and my attention deeply fixed on such an extraordinary spectacle, I
beheld a virgin resplendent with light cast herself at the feet of the
Lord Jesus, and humbly address to Him this petition, "O Lord Jesus
Christ, the Saviour of mankind, for which Thou didst shed Thy precious
blood when hanging on the Cross, look with an eye of compassion on Thy
people, which now groan under the yoke of William. Thou avenger of
wickedness, and most just judge of all men, take vengeance I beseech
Thee on my behalf of this William and deliver me out of his hands, for
as far as lies in his power he hath polluted and grievously afflicted
me." The Lord replied, "Be patient and wait awhile, and soon thou wilt
be fully avenged of him." I trembled at hearing this and doubt not that
the divine anger presently threatens the King; for I understood that
the cries of the holy virgin, our mother the Church, had reached the
ears of the Almighty by reason of the robberies, the foul adulteries
and the heinous crimes of all sorts which the King and his courtiers
cease not daily of committing against the divine law.'"
On being informed of this, the venerable Abbot Serle wrote letters
which he despatched in a friendly spirit from Gloucester informing the
King very distinctly of all the monk had seen in his vision.
William of Malmesbury also records that the King himself the day before
he died, dreamed that he was let blood by a surgeon, and that the
stream, reaching to heaven, clouded the light and intercepted the day.
Calling on St Mary for protection he suddenly awoke, commanded a light
to be brought and forbade his attendants to leave him. They then
watched with him several hours until daylight. Shortly after, just as
the day began to dawn, a certain foreign monk told Robert Fitz Haman
one of the principal nobility that he had that night dreamed a strange
and fearful dream about the King: "That he had come into a certain
church, with menacing and insolent gesture as was his custom, looking
contemptuously on the standers by. Then violently seizing the Crucifix
he gnawed the arms and almost tore away the legs; that the image
endured this for a long time, but at length struck the King with its
foot, in such a manner that he fell backwards; from his mouth as he lay
prostrate issued so copious a flame that the volumes of smoke touched
the very stars. Robert, thinking that this dream ought not to be
neglected as he was intimate with him, immediately related it to the
King. William, repeatedly laughing, exclaimed, 'He is a monk and dreams
for money like a monk; give him a hundred shillings.'"
"Nevertheless," adds William of Malmesbury, "being greatly moved, the
King hesitated a long while whether he should go out to hunt as he
designed; his friends persuading him not to suffer the truth of the
dreams to be tried at his personal risk. In consequence he abstained
from the chase before dinner, dispelling the uneasiness of his
unregulated mind by serious business. They relate that having
plentifully regaled that day, he soothed his cares with a more than
usual quantity of wine."
All this, I suppose, befell in the Castle of Malwood.
After dinner the King prepared to hunt. "Being in great spirits," says
Ordericus, "he was joking with his attendants while his boots were
being laced, when an armourer came and presented him six arrows. The
King immediately took them with great satisfaction, praising the work,
and unconscious of what was to happen, kept four of them himself and
held out the other two to Walter Tyrrel. "It is but right," said he,
"that the sharpest arrows should be given to him who knows best how to
inflict mortal wounds with them." This Tyrrel was a French knight of
good extraction, the wealthy lord of the castles of Poix and Pontoise,
filling a high place among the nobles, and a gallant soldier; he was
therefore admitted to familiar intimacy with the King and became his
constant companion. Meanwhile as they were idly talking and the King's
household attendants were assembled about him, a monk of Gloucester
presented himself and delivered to the King a letter from his abbot.
Having read it, the King burst out laughing and said merrily to the
knight just mentioned, "Walter, do what I told you." The knight
replied, "I will, my lord." Slighting then the warnings of the elders,
and forgetting that the heart is lifted up before a fall, he said
respecting the letter he had received, "I wonder what has induced my
lord Serlo to write me in this strain, for I really believe he is a
worthy abbot and respectable old man. In the simplicity of his heart he
transmits to me, who have enough besides to attend to, the dreams of
his snoring monks and even takes the trouble to commit them to writing
and send them a long distance. Does he think that I follow the example
of the English, who will defer their journey or their business on
account of the dreams of a parcel of wheezing old women?
"Thus speaking, he hastily rose and mounting his horse rode at full
speed to the forest. His brother, Count Henry with William de Bretanel,
and other distinguished persons, followed him, and having penetrated
into the woods the hunters dispersed themselves in various directions
according to custom. The King and Walter Tyrrel posted themselves with
a few others in one part of the forest and stood with their weapons in
their hands eagerly watching for the coming of the game, when a stag
suddenly running between them the King quitted his station and Walter
shot an arrow. It grazed the beast's grizzly back, but glancing from
it mortally wounded the king, who stood within its range. He
immediately fell to the ground, and, alas! suddenly expired."
William of Malmesbury gives a somewhat different account of the King's
death. "The sun was declining when the King, drawing his bow and
letting fly an arrow; slightly wounded a stag which passed before him;
and keenly gazing followed it still running a long time with his eyes,
holding up his hand to keep off the power of the sun's rays. At this
instant, Walter, conceiving a noble exploit, which was, while the
King's attention was otherwise occupied, to transfix another stag
which by chance came near him, unknowingly and without power to prevent
it--oh gracious God!--pierced his breast with a fatal arrow. On
receiving the wound the King uttered not a word; but breaking off the
shaft of the weapon where it projected from his body, fell upon the
wound by which he accelerated his death. Walter immediately ran up, but
as he found him senseless and speechless he leaped swiftly upon his
horse, and escaped by spurring him to his utmost speed. Indeed, there
was none to pursue him; some consented in his flight, and others pitied
him, and all were intent on other matters. Some began to fortify their
dwellings; others to plunder, and the rest to look out for a new king.
A few countrymen conveyed the body, placed on a cart, to the cathedral
at Winchester, the blood dripping from it all the way. Here it was
committed to the ground within the tower, attended by many of the
nobility though lamented by few. Next year [really in 1107] the tower
fell; though I forbear to mention the different opinions on this
subject, lest I should seem to assent too readily to unsupported
trifles, more especially as the building might have fallen through
imperfect construction even though he had never been buried there. He
died in the year of our Lord's Incarnation, 1100, of his reign the
thirteenth, on the fourth before the nones of August, aged above forty
years."
So died the Red King. Whose arrow it was that slew him, whether it came
aforethought from an English bow or by chance from that of Walter
Tyrrel, we shall never know. The Red King fell in the New Forest and
there was no one in all broad England to mourn him. William of
Malmesbury says that a few countrymen carried his body to Winchester.
We may well ask why not to Malwood Castle, which was close by? We may
ask, but we shall get no answer. According to a local legend it was a
charcoal burner of Minstead, Purkess by name, who found the King's body
and bore it away, and ever after his descendants have remained in
Minstead, neither richer nor poorer than their ancestor. As for Sir
Walter, he is said to have sworn to the Prior of St Denys de Poix, a
monastery of his foundation, that he knew nothing of the King's death.
Leland tells us that in his day not only did the tree still exist
against which, according to him, the arrow glanced off and struck the
King, but a little chapel remained there then very old, in which Mass
was wont to be offered for the repose of the King's soul. I wish that I
might have seen it, for it would have pleased me.
Now when I had well considered all this, not without an orison for that
misguided King, I set off for Cadnam, and holding now only to the road,
marching fast, for it was late, I came over the ridge beyond Black
water into the valley of the Test, and so entered Romsey a little after
it was dark.
[Illustration: ROMSEY ABBEY]
Romsey, as I soon found on the following morning, has nothing at all to
offer the traveller except one of the most solemn and noble Norman
churches in all England, monastic too, for it was the church of the
great Benedictine Nunnery of Our Lady of Romsey. It is impossible to
exaggerate the impression this astonishing Norman pile, of vast size
and unsurpassed age and reverence, makes upon the traveller. One seems
in looking upon it to see before his eyes the foundation of England. I
cannot hope to describe it or to convey to another what it meant to me.
It is at once grandiose and reverent, of enormous, almost incredible
size and weight and strength larger than many a cathedral, heavy as a
kingdom, stronger than a thousand years. It seems to have been hewn
bodily out of the cliffs or the great hills.
It is enormously old. The house was founded or perhaps refounded more
than a millennium ago by Edward the Elder in 907; his daughter was
abbess here, and here was buried. In 967 Edgar his grandson gave the
house to the Benedictines. It remained English after the Conquest, for
William seems not to have dealt with it and in 1086 the sister of Edgar
Atheling became abbess. Out of it Henry I. chose his bride that
Abbess's niece Maud a novice of Our Lady of Romsey. Said I not well
that it was as the foundation of England?
We know little of the Abbey for near a hundred years after that, and
then in 1160 the daughter of King Stephen, Mary, whose uncle, Henry of
Blois, was Bishop of Winchester, became abbess, and it was decided to
rebuild the place. Thus the great Norman church we have, arose in the
new England of the twelfth century. Mary, princess and abbess, was,
however, false to her vows. How long she was abbess we do not know,
perhaps only a few months or even days. At any rate, in the very year
she became abbess, the year of her mother's death,[Footnote: See supra
under Faversham.] she forsook her trust and married the son of the Earl
of Flanders, and by him she had two daughters. Then came repentance;
she separated from her husband and returned to Romsey as a penitent.
The great religious house which had grown up thus with England,
continued its great career right through the Middle Ages, about forty
nuns serving there in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, though
this number had dwindled to twenty-three at the time of the Surrender
in 1539. How this surrender was made we do not know; but whether with
or without trouble the result was the same, the great convent was
utterly destroyed. Many of the lands passed to Sir Thomas Seymour, and
the people of Romsey, who had always had a right to the north aisle of
the church, which indeed they enlarged at their own expense in 1403,
bought the whole from the Crown, for one hundred pounds, in 1554.
I have said that there was undoubtedly a great Saxon church here, where
the Norman Abbey of Romsey now stands, and part of the foundations of
this great building were discovered in 1900. That building, founded by
Edward the Elder, rebuilt by Edgar and restored by Canute, stood till
the building of the present church in 1125. The older part of this
building (1125-1150) is to the east of the nave, and consists of
sanctuary and transepts: the nave was begun towards the end of the
twelfth century, the church being finished in the beginning of the
thirteenth. The church is cruciform, two hundred and sixty-three feet
long and one hundred and thirty-one wide; it consists of a great
sanctuary with aisles ending in chapels, square without, apsidal
within, wide transepts each having an eastern apsidal chapel, nave with
aisles, and over the crossing a low tower which was once higher, having
now a seventeenth century polygonal belfry. To the east of the
sanctuary stood two long chapels destroyed since the Suppression. We
have here, as I have said, one of the most glorious Norman buildings in
the world, Norman work which at the western end passes into the most
delightful Early English. The cloister stood to the south of the nave,
to the north stood of old the parish church, growing out of the north
aisle as it were, built so in 1403. This has been destroyed and the
north aisle wall has been rebuilt as in 1150.
The church possesses more than one thing of great interest. The old
high-altar stone is still in existence, and is now used as the
communion table. In the south transept is a fine thirteenth century
effigy of a lady, carved in purbeck. At the end of the south aisle of
the choir is a remarkable stone Crucifix that evidently belonged to
the old Saxon church; about the Cross stand Our Lady, St John and the
Roman soldiers, above are angels. A later Rood is to be seen in the
eastern wall of the old cloister which abutted on to the transept; this
dates from the twelfth century. In the north aisle of the choir is a
very fine painting which used to stand above the high altar in Catholic
times. There we see still the Resurrection of Our Lord with two angels,
above are ten saints, among them St Benedict and St Scholastica, St
Gregory, St Augustine of Canterbury, St Francis and St Clare.
This fine work, which of old showed, above, Christ in Glory, is
of the end of the fourteenth century.
Now when you have seen Romsey Abbey thus as it were with the head; then
is the time to begin to get it by heart. In all South England you may
find no greater glory than this, nor one more entirely our very own, at
least our own as we were but yesterday. It may be that such a place as
Romsey Abbey means nothing to us and can never mean anything again. But
I'll not believe it. For to think so is to despair of England, to
realise that England of my heart has really passed away.
There are two ways by which a man may go from Romsey, in the valley of
the Test to Winchester, in the valley of the Itchen. The more
beautiful, for it gives you, if you will, not only Otterbourne,
Shawford and Compton to the west of the stream, but Twyford to the
east, the Queen of Hampshire villages, is that which makes for the
Roman road between Winchester and Southampton, and following up the
valley of the Itchen enters Winchester at last, by the South Gate,
after passing St Cross in the meads. The shorter road, though far less
lovely, is in some ways the more interesting; for it passes Merdon
Castle and Hursley, where the son of Oliver Cromwell lies, and for this
cause I preferred it.
Merdon Castle, of which some few scanty ruins remain, was built by the
Bishop Henry of Blois about 1138, and no doubt it served its purpose in
the anarchy of Stephen's time, but thereafter it seems to have become
rather a palace than a fortress. The manor of Merdon had always
belonged to the See of Winchester, it is said, since 636, when it was
granted to the Bishop by King Kinegils. It remained with the Bishopric
until the Reformation, when it was granted to Sir Philip Hoby to be
restored to the Church by Queen Mary, and then again regranted to the
Hoby family about 1559. The manor had passed, however, by 1638 to
Richard Major, a miser and a tyrant, who "usurped authority over his
tentant" and more especially, for he was a fanatic Roundhead, "when
King Charles was put to death and Oliver Cromwell was Protector of
England and Richard Major of his Privy Council, and Noll's eldest son,
Richard, was married to Mr Major's Doll." Thus Merdon came into the
Cromwell family, another piece of Church property upon which that very
typical sixteenth-century family had already grown exceedingly wealthy.
Richard Cromwell (as he called himself) lived at Merdon a good deal,
till he succeeded his father in the usurped governance of England. But
when he was turned out in 1660 he found it safer to return to Merdon,
but only for a little while, France offering him, as he wisely thought,
a more secure asylum, not only from a charge of High Treason, but from
his creditors. While he was abroad, we learn he went under another
name; not a new experience for one of his family, which seems to have
had no legitimate name of its own, its members, Oliver amongst them,
signing in important personal matters such as getting hold of the
dowries of their wives, "Williams _alias_ Cromwell." It would,
therefore, be interesting to know under what alias this latest
descendant of the infamous minister of Henry VIII. corresponded with
the wife and family he had left at Merdon. He did not return to Merdon
till 1705, upon the death of his son Oliver. His wife had died in 1676,
and his time was soon to come. He died at Cheshunt in 1712, and was
buried with considerable pomp in Hursley church, where we may still see
his monument, moved from the old church and re-erected in that built by
the efforts of John Keble, vicar of this parish for thirty years, from
1836 to 1866.
And so considering all these strange things I went on to Winchester.