In the eyes of William's contemporaries the death of Waltheof, the blackest act of William's life, was also its turning-point.From the day of the martyrdom on Saint Giles' hill the magic of William's name and William's arms passed away.Unfailing luck no longer waited on him; after Waltheof's death he never, till his last campaign of all, won a battle or took a town.In this change of William's fortunes the men of his own day saw the judgement of God upon his crime.And in the fact at least they were undoubtedly right.Henceforth, though William's real power abides unshaken, the tale of his warfare is chiefly a tale of petty defeats.The last eleven years of his life would never have won him the name of Conqueror.But in the higher walk of policy and legislation never was his nobler surname more truly deserved.Never did William the Great show himself so truly great as in these later years.
The death of Waltheof and the popular judgement on it suggest another act of William's which cannot have been far from it in point of time, and about which men spoke in his own day in the same spirit.If the judgement of God came on William for the beheading of Waltheof, it came on him also for the making of the New Forest.
As to that forest there is a good deal of ancient exaggeration and a good deal of modern misconception.The word FOREST is often misunderstood.In its older meaning, a meaning which it still keeps in some parts, a forest has nothing to do with trees.It is a tract of land put outside the common law and subject to a stricter law of its own, and that commonly, probably always, to secure for the King the freer enjoyment of the pleasure of hunting.Such a forest William made in Hampshire; the impression which it made on men's minds at the time is shown by its having kept the name of the New Forest for eight hundred years.There is no reason to think that William laid waste any large tract of specially fruitful country, least of all that he laid waste a land thickly inhabited; for most of the Forest land never can have been such.But it is certain from Domesday and the Chronicle that William did AFFOREST a considerable tract of land in Hampshire; he set it apart for the purposes of hunting; he fenced it in by special and cruel laws--stopping indeed short of death--for the protection of his pleasures, and in this process some men lost their lands, and were driven from their homes.
Some destruction of houses is here implied; some destruction of churches is not unlikely.The popular belief, which hardly differs from the account of writers one degree later than Domesday and the Chronicle, simply exaggerates the extent of destruction.There was no such wide-spread laying waste as is often supposed, because no such wide-spread laying waste was needed.But whatever was needed for William's purpose was done; and Domesday gives us the record.
And the act surely makes, like the death of Waltheof, a downward stage in William's character.The harrying of Northumberland was in itself a far greater crime, and involved far more of human wretchedness.But it is not remembered in the same way, because it has left no such abiding memorial.But here again the lesser crime needed a worse man to do it.The harrying of Northumberland was a crime done with a political object; it was the extreme form of military severity; it was not vulgar robbery done with no higher motive than to secure the fuller enjoyment of a brutal sport.To this level William had now sunk.It was in truth now that hunting in England finally took the character of a mere sport.Hunting was no new thing; in an early state of society it is often a necessary thing.The hunting of Alfred is spoken of as a grave matter of business, as part of his kingly duty.He had to make war on the wild beasts, as he had to make war on the Danes.The hunting of William is simply a sport, not his duty or his business, but merely his pleasure.And to this pleasure, the pleasure of inflicting pain and slaughter, he did not scruple to sacrifice the rights of other men, and to guard his enjoyment by ruthless laws at which even in that rough age men shuddered.
For this crime the men of his day saw the punishment in the strange and frightful deaths of his offspring, two sons and a grandson, on the scene of his crime.One of these himself he saw, the death of his second son Richard, a youth of great promise, whose prolonged life might have saved England from the rule of William Rufus.He died in the Forest, about the year 1081, to the deep grief of his parents.And Domesday contains a touching entry, how William gave back his land to a despoiled Englishman as an offering for Richard's soul.
The forfeiture of three earls, the death of one, threw their honours and estates into the King's hands.Another fresh source of wealth came by the death of the Lady Edith, who had kept her royal rank and her great estates, and who died while the proceedings against Waltheof were going on.It was not now so important for William as it had been in the first years of the Conquest to reward his followers; he could now think of the royal hoard in the first place.
Of the estates which now fell in to the Crown large parts were granted out.The house of Bigod, afterwards so renowned as Earls of Norfolk, owe their rise to their forefather's share in the forfeited lands of Earl Ralph.But William kept the greater part to himself;one lordship in Somerset, part of the lands of the Lady, he gave to the church of Saint Peter at Rome.Of the three earldoms, those of Hereford and East-Anglia were not filled up; the later earldoms of those lands have no connexion with the earls of William's day.
