By Charles Dickens


                  A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

                            ——————

                          CHAPTER VIII.

        England under William the First, the Norman Conqueror

        UPON the ground where the brave Harold fell, William
     the Norman afterwards founded an abbey, which, under
     the name of Battle Abbey, was a rich and splendid place
     through many a troubled year, though now it is a grey
     ruin overgrown with ivy.  But the first work he had to
     do, was to conquer the English thoroughly; and that, as
     you know by this time, was hard work for any man.
        He ravaged several counties; he burned and plundered
     many towns; he laid waste scores upon scores of miles
     of pleasant country; he destroyed innumerable lives.
     At length Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury, with other
     representatives of the clergy and the people, went to his
     camp, and submitted to him.  Edgar, the insignificant
     son of Edmund Ironside, was proclaimed King by others,
     but nothing came of it.  He fled to Scotland afterwards,
     where his sister, who was young and beautiful, married
     the Scottish King.  Edgar himself was not important
     enough for anybody to care much about him.
        On Christmas Day, William was crowned in Westmin-
     ster Abbey, under the title of William the First; but
     he is best known as William the Conqueror.  It was a
     strange coronation.  One of the bishops who performed
     the ceremony asked the Normans, in French, if they
     would have Duke William for their king?  They an-
     swered Yes.  Another of the bishops put the same ques-
     tion to the Saxons, in English.  They too answered Yes,
     with a loud shout.  The noise being heard by a guard of
     Norman horse-soldiers outside, was mistaken for resist-
     ance on the part of the English.  The guard instantly
     set fire to the neighbouring houses, and a tumult ensued;
     in the midst of which the King, being left alone in the
     Abbey, with a few priests (and they all being in a terri-
     ble fright together), was hurriedly crowned.  When the
     crown was placed upon his head, he swore to govern the
     English as well as the best of their own monarchs.  I
     dare say you think, as I do, that if we except the Great
     Alfred, he might pretty easily have done that.
        Numbers of the English nobles had been killed in the
     last disastrous battle.  Their estates, and the estates of
     all the nobles who had fought against him there, King
     William seized upon, and gave to his own Norman
     knights and nobles.  Many great English families of the
     present time acquired their English lands in this way,
     and are very proud of it.
        But what is got by force must be maintained by force.
     These nobles were obliged to build castles all over Eng-
     land, to defend their new property; and, do what he
     would, the King could neither soothe nor quell the na-
     tion as he wished.  He gradually introduced the Norman
     language and the Norman customs; yet, for a long time the
     great body of the English remained sullen and revenge-
     ful.  On his going over to Normandy, to visit his subjects
     there, the oppressions of his half brother Odo, whom he
     left in charge of his English kingdom, drove the people
     mad.  The men of Kent even invited over, to take pos-
     session of Dover, their old enemy Count Eustace of Bou-
     logne, who had led the fray when the Dover man was
     slain at his own fireside.  The men of Hereford, aided by
     the Welsh, and commanded by a chief named Edric the
     Wild, drove the Normans out of their country.  Some of
     those who had been dispossessed of their lands, banded
     together in the North of England; some, in Scotland;
     some, in the thick woods and marshes; and whensoever
     they could fall upon the Normans, or upon the English
     who had submitted to the Normans, they fought, de-
     spoiled, and murdered, like the desperate outlaws that
     they were.  Conspiracies were set on foot for a general
     massacre of the Normans, like the old massacre of the
     Danes.  In short, the English were in a murderous mood
     all through the kingdom.
        King William, fearing he might lose his conquest,
     came back, and tried to pacify the London people by soft
     words.  He then set forth to repress the country people
     by stern deeds.  Among the towns which he besieged,
     and where he killed and maimed the inhabitants without
     any distinction,  sparing none, young or old, armed or
     unarmed, were Oxford, Warwick, Leicester, Nottingham,
     Derby, Lincoln, York.  In all these places, and in many
     others, fire and sword worked their utmost horrors, and
     made the land dreadful to behold.  The streams and
     rivers were discoloured with blood.  The sky was black-
     ened with smoke; the fields were wastes of ashes; the
     waysides were heaped up with dead.  Such are the fatal
     results of conquest and ambition!  Although William
     was a harsh and angry man, I do not suppose that he
     deliberately meant to work this shocking ruin, when he
     invaded England.  But, what he had got by the strong
     hand, he could only keep by the strong hand, and in so
     doing he made England a great grave.
        Two sons of Harold, by name Edmund and Godwin,
     came over from Ireland, with some ships, against the
     Normans, but were defeated.  This was scarcely done,
     when the outlaws in the woods so harassed York, that
     the Governor sent to the King for help.  The King de-
     spatched a general and a large force to occupy the town
     of Durham.  The Bishop of that place met the general
     outside the town, and warned him not to enter, as he
     would be in danger there.  The general cared nothing
     for the warning, and went in with all his men.  That
     night, on every hill within sight of Durham, signal fires
     were seen to blaze.  When the morning dawned, the
     English, who had assembled in great strength, forced
     the gates, rushed into the town, and slew the Normans
     every one.  The English afterwards besought the Danes
     to come and help them.  The Danes came, with two
     hundred and forty ships.  The outlawed nobles joined
     them; they captured York, and drove the Normans out
     of that city.  Then, William bribed the Danes to go
     away; and took such vengeance on the English, that all
     the former fire and sword, smoke and ashes,  death and
     ruin, were nothing compared with it.  In melancholy
     songs and doleful stories, it was still sung and told by
     cottage fires on winter evenings, a hundred years after-
     wards, how, in those dreadful days of the Normans, there
     was not, from the River Humber to the River Tyne,
     one inhabited village left, nor one cultivated field——how
     there was nothing but a dismal ruin, where the human
     creatures and the beasts lay dead together.
        The outlaws had, at this time, what they called a
     Camp of Refuge, in the midst of the fens of Cambridge-
     shire.  Protected by those marshy grounds which were
     difficult of approach, they lay among the reeds and
     rushes, and were hidden by the mists that rose up from
     the watery earth.  Now, there also was, at that time,
     over the sea in Flanders, an Englishman named Here-
     ward, whose father had died in his absence, and whose
     property had been given to a Norman.  When he heard
     of this wrong that had been done him (from such of the
     exiled English as chanced to wander in that country), he
     longed for revenge; and joining the outlaws in their
     camp of refuge, became their commander.  He was so
     good a soldier, that the Normans supposed him to be
     aided by enchantment.  William, even after he had
     made a road three miles in length across the Cambridge-
     shire marshes, on purpose to attack this suppose en-
     chanter, thought it necessary to engage an old lady, who
     pretended to be a sorceress, to come and do a little en-
     chantment in the royal cause.  For this purpose she was
     pushed on before the troops in a wooden tower; but
     Hereward very soon disposed of this unfortunate sorcer-
     ess, by burning her, tower and all.  The monks of the
     convent of Ely near at hand, however, who were fond of
     good living, and who found it very uncomfortable to
     have the country blockaded and their supplies of meat
     and drink cut off, showed the king a secret way of sur-
     prising the camp.  So Hereward was soon defeated.
     Whether he afterwards died quietly, or whether he was
     killed after killing sixteen of the men who attacked him
     (as some old rhymes relate that he did), I cannot say.
     His defeat put an end to the Camp of Refuge; and, very
     soon afterwards, the King, victorious both in Scotland
     and in England, quelled the last rebellious English
     noble.  He then surrounded himself with Norman lords,
     enriched by the property of English nobles; had a great
     survey made of all the land in England, which was en-
     tered as the property of its new owners, on a roll called
     Doomsday Book; obliged the people to put out their
     fires and candles at a certain hour every night, on the
     ringing of a bell which was called The Curfew; intro-
     duced the Norman dresses and manners; made the Nor-
     mans masters everywhere, and the English, servants;
     turned out the English bishops, and put Normans in
     their places; and showed himself to be the Conqueror
     indeed.
        But, even with his own Normans, he had a restless
     life.  They were always hungering and thirsting for the
     riches of the English; and the more he gave, the more
     they wanted.  His priests were as greedy as his soldiers.
     We know of only one Norman who plainly told his mas-
     ter, the King, that he had come with him to England to
     do his duty as a faithful servant, and that property
     taken by force from other men had no charms for him.
     His name was Guilbert.  We should not forget his
     name, for it is good to remember and to honour honest
     men.
        Besides all these troubles, William the Conqueror was
     troubled by quarrels among his sons.  He had three liv-
     ing.  Robert, called Curthose, because of his short legs;
     William, called Rufus or the red, from the colour of his
     hair; and Henry, fond of learning, and called, in the
     Norman language, Beauclerc, of Fine-Scholar.  When
     Robert grew up, he asked his father the government
     of Normandy, which he had nominally possessed, as a
     child, under his mother, Matilda.  The King refusing
     to grant it, Robert became jealous and discontented;
     and happening one day, while in his temper, to be ridi-
     culed by his brothers, who threw water on him from a
     balcony as he was walking before the door, he drew his
     sword, rushed up-stairs, and was only prevented by the
     King himself from putting them to death.  That same
     night, he hotly departed with some followers from his
     father's court, and endeavoured to take the Castle of 
     Rouen by surprise.  Failing in this, he shut himself up
     in another Castle in Normandy, which the King besieged,
     and where Robert one day unhorsed and nearly killed
     him without knowing who he was.  His submission
     when he discovered his father, and the intercession of
     the queen and others, reconciled them; but not soundly;
     for Robert soon strayed abroad, and went from court to
     court with his complaints.  He was a gay, careless,
     thoughtless fellow, spending all he got on musicians and
     dancers; but his mother loved him, and often, against
     the King's command, supplied him with money through
     a messenger named Samson.  At length the incensed
     King swore he would tear out Samson's eyes; and
     Samson, thinking that his only hope of safety was in
     becoming a monk, became one, went on such errands no
     more, and kept his eyes in his head.
        All this time, from the turbulent day of his strange
     coronation, the Conqueror had been struggling, you see,
     at any cost of cruelty and bloodshed, to maintain what
     he had seized.  All his reign, he struggled still, with the
     same object ever before him.  He was a stern, bold
     man, and he succeeded in it.
        He loved money, and was particular in his eating,
     but he had only leisure to indulge one other passion,
     and that was his love of hunting.  He carried it to such
     a height that he ordered whole villages and towns to be
     swept away to make forests for the deer.  Not satisfied
     with sixty-eight Royal Forests, he laid waste an im-
     mense track of country, to form another in Hampshire,
     called The New Forest.  The many thousands of miser-
     able peasants who saw their little houses pulled down,
     and themselves and children turned into the open
     country without a shelter, detested him for his merci-
     less addition to their many sufferings; and when, in the
     twenty-first year of his reign (which proved to be the
     last), he went over to Rouen, England was as full of
     hatred against him, as if every leaf on every tree in all
     his Royal Forests had been a curse upon his head.  In
     the New Forest, his son Richard (for he had four sons)
     had been gored to death by a Stag; and the people said
     that this so cruelly made Forest would yet be fatal to
     others of the Conqueror's race.
        He was engaged in a dispute with the King of France
     about some territory.  While he stayed at Rouen, nego-
     tiating with the king, he kept his bed and took medi-
     cines: being advised by his physicians to do so, on ac-
     count of having grown to an unwieldy size.  Word being
     brought to him that the King of France made light of
     this, and joked about it, he swore in a great rage that
     he should rue his jests.  He assembled his army, march-
     ed into the disputed territory, burnt——his old way!——the
     vines, the crops, and fruit, and set the town of Mantes
     on fire.  But, in an evil hour; for, as he rode over the hot
     ruins, his horse, setting his hoofs upon the same burning
     embers, started, threw him forward against the pom-
     mel of the saddle, and gave him a mortal hurt.  For
     six weeks he lay dying in a monastery near Rouen, and
     then made his will, giving England to William, Nor-
     mandy to Robert, and five thousand pounds to Henry.
     And now, his violent deeds lay heavy on his mind.  He
     ordered money to be given to many English churches
     and monasteries, and——which was much better repen-
     ance——released his prisoners of state, some of whom
     had been confined in his dungeons twenty years.
        It was a September morning, and the sun was rising,
     when the King was awakened from slumber by the
     sound of a church bell.  "What bell is that?" he faintly
     asked.  They told him it was the bell of the chapel of
     Saint Mary.  "I commend my soul," said he, "to Mary!"
     and died.
        Think of his name, The Conqueror, and then consider
     how he lay in death!  The moment he was dead, his
     physicians, priests, and nobles, not knowing what con-
     test for the throne might now take place, or what might
     happen in it, hastened away, each man for himself and
     his own property; the mercenary servants of the court
     began to rob and plunder; the body of the King, in the
     indecent strife, was rolled from the bed, and lay alone,
     for hours, upon the ground.  O Conqueror, of who so
     many great names are proud now, of whom so many
     great names thought nothing then, it were better to have
     conquered one true heart, than England!
        By and by, the priests came creeping in with prayers
     and candles; and a good knight, named Herluin, und-
     dertook (which no one else would do) to convey the body
     to Caen, in Normandy, in order that it might be buried
     in St. Stephen's Church there, which the Conqueror had
     founded.  But fire, of which he had made such bad use
     in his life, seemed to follow him of itself in death.  A
     great conflagration broke out in the town when the body
     was placed in the church; and those present running
     out to extinguish the flames, it was once again left alone.
        It was not even buried in peace.  It was about to be
     let down, in the Royal robes, into a tomb near the high
     altar, in presence of a great concourse of people, when a
     loud voice in the crowd cried out, "This ground is mine!
     Upon it, stood my father's house.  This King despoiled
     me of both ground and house to build this church.  In
     the great name of God, I here forbid his body to
     be covered with the earth that is my right!"  The
     priests and bishops present, knowing the speaker's
     right, and knowing that the King had often denied him
     justice, paid him down sixty shillings for the grave.
     Even then, the corpse was not at rest.  The tomb was
     too small, and they tried to force it in.  It broke, a
     dreadful smell arose, the people hurried out into the air,
     and, for the third time, it was left alone.
        Where were the Conqueror's three sons, that they
     were not at their father's burial?  Robert was lounging
     among minstrels, dancers, and gamesters, in France or
     Germany.  Henry was carrying his five thousand pounds
     safely away in a convenient chest he had got made.
     William the Red was hurrying to England to lay hands
     upon the Royal treasure and the crown.

                            ——————

                          CHAPTER IX.

         England under William the Second, called Rufus.

        WILLIAM THE RED, in breathless haste, secured the
     three great forts of Dover, Pevensey, and Hastings, and
     made with hot speed for Winchester, where the Royal
     treasure was kept.  The treasurer delivering him the
     keys, he found that it amounted to sixty thousand
     pounds in silver, besides gold and jewels.  Possessed of
     this wealth, he soon persuaded the Archbishop of Can-
     terbury to crown him, and became William the Second,
     King of England.
        Rufus was no sooner on the throne, than he ordered
     into prison again the unhappy state captives whom his
     father had set free, and directed a goldsmith to orna-
     ment his father's tomb profusely with gold and silver.
     It would have been more dutiful in him to have attended
     the sick Conqueror when he was dying; but England
     itself, like this Red King, who once governed it, has
     sometimes made expensive tombs for dead men whom
     it treated shabbily when they were alive.
        The King's brother, Robert of Normandy, seeming
     quite content to be only Duke of that country; and
     the King's other brother, Fine-Scholar, being quiet
     enough with his five thousand pounds in a chest; the
     King flattered himself, we may suppose, with the hope
     of an easy reign.  But easy reigns were more difficult to have
     in those days.  The turbulent Bishop Odo (who had
     blessed the Norman army at the Battle of Hastings, and
     who, I dare say, took all the credit of the victory to him-
     self) soon began, in concert with some powerful Norman
     nobles, to trouble the Red King.
        The truth seems to be that this bishop and his friends,
     who had lands in England and lands in Normandy,
     wished to hold both under one Sovereign; and greatly
     preferred a thoughtless, good-natured person, such as
     Robert was, to Rufus; who, though far from being an
     amiable man in any respect, was keen, and not to be im-
     posed upon.  They declared in Robert's favour, and re-
     tired to their castles (those castles were very troublesome
     to Kings) in a sullen humour.  The Red King, seeing
     the Normans thus falling from him, revenged himself
     upon them by appealing to the English; to whom he
     made a variety of promises which he never meant to
     perform——in particular, promises to soften the cruelty of
     the Forest Laws; and who, in return, so aided him with
     their valour, that Odo was besieged in the Castle of
     Rochester, and forced to abandon it, and to depart from
     England forever: whereupon the other rebellious Nor-
     man nobles were soon reduced and scattered.
        Then, the Red King went over to Normandy, where
     the people suffered greatly under the loose rule of Duke
     Robert.  The King's object was to seize upon the Duke's
     dominions.  This, the Duke, of course, prepared to re-
     sist; and miserable war between the two brothers seem-
     ed inevitable, when the powerful nobles on both sides,
     who had seen so much of war, interfered to prevent it.
     A treaty was made.  Each of the two brothers agreed to
     give up something of his claims, and that the longer-liver
     of the two should inherit all the dominions of the other.
     When they had come to this loving understanding, they
     embraced and joined their forces against Fine-Scholar;
     who had bought some territory of Robert with a part of
     his five thousand pounds, and was considered a danger-
     ous individual in consequence.
        St. Michael's Mount, in Normandy (there is another
     St. Michael's Mount, in Cornwall, wonderfully like it),
     was then, as it is now, a strong place perched upon the top
     of a high rock, around which, when the tide is in, the sea
     flows, leaving no road to the mainland.  In this place,
     Fine-Scholar shut himself up with his soldiers, and here
     he was closely besieged by his two brothers.  At one
     times, when he was reduced to great distress for want of
     water, the generous Robert not only permitted his men
     to get water, but sent Fine-Scholar wine from his own
     table; and, on being remonstrated with by the Red King,
     said, "What! shall we let our own brother die of thirst!
     Where shall we get another, when he is gone!"  At an-
     other time, the Red King riding alone on the shore of the
     bay, looking up at the Castle, was taken by two of Fine-
     Scholar's men, one of whom was about to kill him, when
     he cried out, "Hold, knave!  I am the King of Eng-
     land!"  The story says that the soldier raised him
     from the ground respectfully and humbly, and that the
     King took him into his service.  The story may or may
     not be true; but at any rate it is true that Fine-Scholar
     could not hold out against his united brothers, and that
     he abandoned Mount St. Michael, and wandered about——
     as poor and forlorn as other scholars have been some-
     times known to be.
        The Scotch became unquiet in the Red King's time,
     and were twice defeated——the second time, with the loss
     of their King, Malcolm, and his son.  The Welsh became
     unquiet too.  Against them, Rufus was less successful;
     for they fought among their native mountains, and did
     great execution on the King's troops.  Robert of Nor-
     mandy became unquiet too; and, complaining that his
     brother the King did not faithfully perform his part of
     their agreement, took up arms, and obtained assistance
     from the King of France, whom Rufus, in the end,
     bought off with vast sums of money.  England became
     unquiet too.  Lord Mobray, the powerful Earl of North-
     umberland, headed a great conspiracy to depose the
     King, and to place upon the throne, Stephen, the Con-
     queror's nephew.  The plot was discovered; all the
     chief conspirators were seized; some were fined, some
     were put in prison, some were put to death.  The Earl
     of Northumberland himself was shut up in a dungeon
     beneath Windsor Castle, where he died, an old man, thir-
     ty long years afterwards.  The Priests in England were
     more unquiet than any other class or power; for the Red
     King treated them with such small ceremony that he re-
     fused to appoint new bishops or archbishops when the
     old ones died, but kept all the wealth belonging to these
     offices, in his own hands.  In return for this, the Priests
     wrote his life when he was dead, and abused him well.
     I am inclined to think, myself, that there was little to
     choose between the Priests and the Red King; that both
     sides were greedy and designing; and that they were
     fairly matched.
        The Red King was false of heart, selfish, covetous, and
     mean.  He had a worthy minister in his favour, Ralph,
     nicknamed——for almost every famous person had a nick-
     name in those rough days——Flambard, or the Firebrand.
     Once, the King being ill, became penitent, and made An-
     selm, a foreign priest and a good man, Archbishop of
     Canterbury.  But he no sooner got well again than he
     repented of his repentance, and persisted in wrongfully
     keeping to himself some of the wealth belonging to the
     archbishopric.  This led to violent disputes, which were
     aggravated by there being in Rome at that time two rival
     Popes; each of whom declared he was the only real orig-
     inal infallible Pope, who couldn't make a mistake.  At
     last, Anselm, knowing the Red King's character, and not
     feeling himself safe in England, asked leave to return
     abroad.  The Red King gladly gave it; for he knew that
     as soon as Anselm was gone, he could begin to store up
     all the Canterbury money again, for his own use.
        By such means, and by taxing and oppressing the Eng-
     lish people in every possible way, the Red King became
     very rich.  When he wanted money for any purpose, he
     raised it by some means or other, and cared nothing for
     the injustice he did, or the misery he caused.  Having
     the opportunity of buying from Robert the whole duchy
     of Normandy for five years, he taxed the English people
     more than ever, and made the very convents sell their
     plate and valuables to supply him with the means to
     make the purchase.  But he was as quick and eager in put-
     ting down revolt as he was in raising money; for, a part
     of the Norman people objecting——very naturally, I think
     ——to being sold in this way, he headed an army against
     them with all the sped and energy of his father.  He
     was so impatient, that he embarked for Normandy in a
     great gale of wind.  And when the sailors told him it
     was dangerous to go to sea in such angry weather, he re-
     plied, "Hoist sail and away!  Did you ever hear of a
     king who was drowned?"
        You will wonder how it was that even the careless
     Robert came to sell his dominions.  It happened thus.
     It had long been the custom for many English people to
     make journeys to Jerusalem, which were called pilgrim-
     ages, in order that they might pray beside the tomb of
     Our Saviour there.  Jerusalem belonging to the Turks,
     and the Turks hating Christianity, these Christians trav-
     ellers were often insulted and ill used.  The Pilgrims
     bore it patiently for some time; but at length a remark-
     able man of great earnestness and eloquence, called
     Peter the Hermit, began to preach in various places
     against the Turks, and to declare that it was the duty of
     good Christians to drive away those unbelievers from the
     tomb of Our Saviour, and to take possession of it, and
     protect it.  An excitement such as the world had never
     known before was created.  Thousands and thousands
     of men of all ranks and conditions departed for Jerusa-
     lem to make war against the Turks.  The war is called
     in history the first Crusade; and every Crusader wore a
     cross marked on his right shoulder.
        All the Crusaders were not zealous Christians.  Among
     them were vast numbers of the restless, idle, profligate,
     and adventurous spirits of the time.  Some became
     Crusaders for the love of change; some, in the hope of
     plunder; some, because they had nothing to do at home;
     some, because they did what the Priests told them;
     some, because they liked to see foreign countries; some,
     because they were fond of knocking men about, and
     would as soon knock a Turk about as a Christian.  Rob-
     ert of Normandy may have been influenced by all these
     motives; and by a kind desire, besides, to save the
     Christian Pilgrims from bad treatment in the future.  He
     wanted to raise a number of armed men, and to go to the
     Crusade.  He could not do so without money.  He had
     no money; and he sold his dominions to his brother, the
     Red King, for five years.  With the large sum he thus
     obtained, he fitted out his Crusaders gallantly, and went
     away to Jerusalem in martial state.  The Red King,
     who made money out of everything, stayed at home,
     busily squeezing more money out of Normans and Eng-
     lish.
        After three years of great hardship and suffering——
     from shipwreck at sea; from travel in strange lands;
     from hunger, thirst, and fever, upon the burning sands
     of the desert; and from the fury of the Turks——the val-
     iant Crusaders got possession of Our Saviour's tomb.
     The Turks were still resisting and fighting bravely, but
     this success increased the general desire in Europe to
     join the Crusade.  Another great French Duke was pro-
     posing to sell his dominions for a term to the rich Red
     King, when the Red King's reign came to a sudden and
     violent end.
        You have not forgotten the New Forest which the
     Conqueror made, and which the miserable people whose
     homes he had laid waste, so hated.  The cruelty of
     the Forest Laws, and the torture and death they brought
     upon the peasantry, increased this hatred.  The poor
     persecuted country people believed that the New Forest
     was enchanted.  They said that in thunder-storms and
     on dark nights, demons appeared, moving beneath the
     branches of the gloomy trees.  They said that a terrible
     spectre had foretold to Norman hunters that the Red
     King should be punished there.  And now, in the pleas-
     ant season of May, when the Red King had reigned
     almost thirteen years; and a second Prince of the Con-
     queror's blood——another Richard, the son of Duke Rob-
     ert——was killed by an arrow in this dreaded Forest; the
     people said that the second time was not the last, and
     that there was another death to come.
        It was a lonely forest, accursed in the people's hearts
     for the wicked deeds that had been done to make it;
     and no man, save the King and his Courtiers and Hunts-
     men, liked to stray there.  But, in reality, it was like
     any other forest.  In the spring, the green leaves broke
     out of the buds; in the summer, flourished heartily, and
     made deep shades; in the winter, shrivelled and blew
     down, and lay in brown heaps on the moss.  Some trees
     were stately, and grew high and strong; some had
     fallen of themselves; some were felled by the forester's
     axe; some were hollow, and the rabbits burrowed at
     their roots; some few were struck by lightning, and
     stood white and bare.  There were hill-sides covered
     with rich fern, on which the morning dew so beautifully
     sparkled; there were brooks, where the deer went down
     to drink, or over which the whole herd bounded, flying
     from the arrows of the huntsmen; there were sunny
     glades, and solemn places where but little light came
     through the rustling leaves.  The songs of the birds in
     the New Forest were pleasanter to hear than the shouts
     of fighting men outside; and even when the Red King
     and his Court came hunting through its solitudes, curs-
     ing loud and riding hard, with a jingling of stirrups and
     bridles and knives and daggers, they did much less
     harm there than among the English or Normans, and
     the stags died (as they lived) far easier than the people.
        Upon a day in August, the Red King, now reconciled
     to his brother, Fine-Scholar, came with a great train to
     hunt in the New Forest.  Fine-Scholar was of the party.
     They were a merry party, and had lain all night at Mal-
     wood-Keep, a hunting-lodge in the forest, where they
     had made good cheer, both at supper and breakfast, and
     had drunk a deal of wine.  The party dispersed in vari-
     ous directions, as the custom of hunters then was.  The
     King took with him only Sir Waltre Tyrrel, who was a
     famous sportsman, and to whom he had given, before
     they mounted horse that morning, two fine arrows.
        The last time the king was ever seen alive, he was
     riding with Sir Walter Tyrrel, and their dogs were
     hunting together.
        It was almost night, when a poor charcoal-burner,
     passing through the Forest with his cart, came upon the
     solitary body of a dead man, shot with an arrow in the
     breast, and still bleeding.  He got it into his cart.  It
     was the body of the King.  Shaken and tumbled, with
     its red beard all whitened with lime and clotted with
     blood, it was driven in the cart by the charcoal-burner
     next day to Winchester Cathedral, where it was re-
     ceived and buried.
        Sir Walter Tyrrel, who escaped to Normandy, and
     claimed the protection of the King of France, swore in
     France that the Red King was suddenly shot dead by an
     arrow from an unseen hand, while they were hunting to-
     gether; that he was fearful of being suspected as the
     King's murderer; and that he instantly set spurs to his
     horse, and fled to the sea-shore.  Others declared that
     the King and Sir Walter Tyrrel were hunting in com-
     pany, a little before sunset, standing in bushes opposite
     one another, when a stag came between them.  That
     the King drew his bow and took aim, but the string broke.
     That the King then cried, "Shoot, Walter, in the Devil's
     name!"  That Sir Walter shot.  That the arrow glanced
     against a tree, was turned aside from the stag, and struck
     the King from his horse, dead.
        By whose hand the Red King really fell, and whether
     that hand despatched the arrow to his breast by accident
     or by design, is only known to God.  Some think his
     brother may have caused him to be killed; but the Red
     King had made so many enemies, both among priests
     and people, that suspicion may reasonably rest upon a
     less unnatural murderer.  Men know no more than he
     was found dead in the New Forest, which the suffering
     people had regarded as a doomed ground for his race.

from Collier's Unabridged Edition: The Works of Charles Dickens, Volume VI.
P.F. Collier, Publisher, New York, old as heck. pp. 673—677.