, there
were scattered hamlets, and these were destroyed and the dwellers in
them driven off by William's orders, that there might be a 'mickle
deer-frith.' We may be sure that there was not nearly as much misery
caused by the making of the New Forest as was caused by the harrying
of the Vale of York, but popular tradition rightly held in more
abhorrence the lesser cruelty for the sake of pleasure than the
greater cruelty for the sake of policy. It told how the New Forest was
accursed for William's family. In his own lifetime a son and a
grandson of his were cut off within it by unknown hands, probably
falling before the vengeance of some who had lost home and substance
through the creation of the Forest, and in due time another son, who
succeeded him on the throne, was to meet with a similar fate.

12. =Domesday Book. 1085--1086.=--It was to William's credit that his
government was a strong one. In William's days life and property and
female honour were under the protection of a king who knew how to make
himself obeyed. Strong government, however, is always expensive, and
William and his officers were always ready with an excuse for getting
money. "The king and the headmen loved much and overmuch covetousness
on gold and on silver, and they recked not how sinfully it was gotten,
if only it came to them.... They reared up unright tolls, and many
other unright things they did that are hard to reckon." Other men, in
short, must observe the law; William's government was a law to itself.
It was, however, a law, and not a mere scramble for money. Though
there were no Danish invaders now, William continued to levy the
Danegeld, and he had rents and payments due to him in many quarters
which had been due to his predecessors. In order to make his exactions
more complete and more regular, he resolved to have set down the
amount of taxable property in the realm that his full rights might be
known, and in =1085=, "He sent over all England into ilk shire his
men, and let them find out how many hundred hides were in the shire,
or what the king himself had of land or cattle in the land, or whilk
rights he ought to have.... Eke he let write how mickle of land his
archbishops had, and his bishops, and his abbots and his earls, and
what or how mickle ilk man had that landholder was in England in land
and in cattle, and how mickle fee it was worth. So very narrowly he
let speer it out that there was not a single hide nor a yard of land,