ilk right fell away, and ilk unright for God and for world uprose."[1]
Stricter forest laws.
Story of the fifty Englishmen.
Thus were the promises with which William Rufus
had bought the help of the English people in his day
of danger utterly trampled under foot. He had promised
them good laws and freedom from unrighteous taxes;
he had promised them that they should have again, as
in the days of Cnut,[2] the right of every man to slay
the beasts of the field for his lawful needs. Instead
of all this, the reign of the younger William became,
above all other reigns, a reign of unlaw and of ungeld.
The savage pleasures of the father, for the sake of which
he had laid waste the homes and fields of Hampshire,
were sought after by the son with a yet keener zest,
and were fenced in by a yet sterner code. In the days
of William the Red the man who slew a hart had, what
he had not in the days of William the Great, to pay
for his crime with his life.[3] The working of this stern
law is shown in one of the many stories of William
Rufus, a story of which we should like to hear the end
a little more clearly.[4] Fifty men were charged with
having taken, killed, and eaten the King's deer. We
are so generally left to guess at the nationality of the
lesser actors in our story that our attention is specially
called to the marked way in which we are told that
- ↑ Chron. Petrib. 1100. "He wæs swiðe strang and reðe ofer his land and his mænn and wið ealle his neahheburas, and swiðe ondrædendlic, and þurh yfelra manna rædas þe him æfre gecweme wæran and þurh his agene gitsunga, he æfre þas leode mid here and mid ungylde tyrwigende wæs, forþan þe on his dagan ælc riht afeoll and ælc unriht for Gode and for worulde úp aras."
- ↑ See N. C. vol. i. pp. 436, 754.
- ↑ Will. Malms. iv. 319. "Venationes, quas rex primo indulserat, adeo prohibuit ut capitale esset supplicium prendisse cervum." Contrast this with his father's law in N. C. vol. iv. p. 621.
- ↑ The story is told by Eadmer, Hist. Nov. 48. It is brought in as an illustration of the impiety of Rufus rather than of his cruelty.
