m; and that notwithstanding this pretended
devastation they sunk (in many instances) but little in their value
after their afforestment. So that the fact seems to have been, William,
finding this tract in a barren state and yielding but little profit,
and being strongly attached to the pleasures of the chase, converted it
into a royal forest, without being guilty of those violences to the
inhabitants of which Henry of Huntingdon, Malmesbury, Walter Mapes, and
others complain."

Of this great New Forest, Lyndhurst was made the capital and the
administrative centre, and such it is still. In Domesday Book we read:
"The King himself holds Lyndhurst, which appertained to Amesbury,
which is of the King's farm."

The King granted a small part, namely, one virgate to "Herbert the
Forester," before 1086, and this Herbert is generally supposed to have
been the ancestor of those Lyndhursts who for so long held the
wardenship of the Forest. The King's house, a fine building of Queen
Anne's time, is the successor of the old royal lodge at least as old as
the fourteenth century, and is now occupied by the Deputy Surveyor of
the Forest. In the Verderers' Hall close by, the forest courts of the
verderers are still held. There, too, may be seen the old dock, certain
trophies of the chase and "the stirrup-iron of William Rufus," really
the seventeenth century gauge "for the dogs allowed to be kept in the
forest without expeditation, the 'lawing' being carried out on all
'great dogs' that could not pass through the stirrup."

Lyndhurst itself, as we see it to-day, is devoid of interest; even the
church dates but from 1863, and its greatest treasure is the wall-
painting by Lord Leighton of the Wise and Foolish Virgins in the
chancel. A church, a chapelry of Minstead, certainly stood here in the
thirteenth century, but was destroyed, and a Georgian building erected
--in its turn to give place to the church we see.

Lyndhurst, though almost without interest itself, is undoubtedly the
best centre for exploring the Forest, or, at any rate, perhaps the most
beautiful and certainly the most interesting parts of it. So by many a
byway I went northward to Minstead in Malwood, where I found a most
curious church, rather indeed a house than a church, with dormer
windows in the roof, an enormous three-decker pulpit within, galleries,
and two great pews, one with a fireplace, and I know not what other
quaint rubbish of the eighteenth century. All