“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.”