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.