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  I shall have occasion to return to this New Forest, which is, in reality, though, in general, a very barren district, a much more interesting object to Englishmen than are the services of my Lord Palmerston, and the warlike undertakings of Burdett, Galloway and Company; but, I cannot quit this spot, even for the present, without asking the Scotch population-mongers and Malthus and his crew; and especially George Chalmers, if he should yet be creeping about upon the face of the earth, what becomes of all their notions of the scantiness of the ancient population of England; what becomes of all these notions, of all their bundles of ridiculous lies about the fewness of the people in former times; what becomes of them all, if historians have told us one word of truth, with regard to the formation of the New Forest, by William the Conqueror. All the historians say, every one of them says, that this King destroyed several populous towns and villages in order to make this New Forest.

  FROM WESTON, NEAR SOUTHAMPTON, TO KENSINGTON

  Western Grove, 18th Oct. 1826

  I broke off abruptly, under this same date, in my last Register, when speaking of William the Conqueror’s demolishing of towns and villages to make the New Forest; and, I was about to show, that all the historians have told us lies the most abominable about this affair of the New Forest; or, that the Scotch writers on population and particularly CHALMERS, have been the greatest of fools, or the most impudent of impostors. I, therefore, now resume this matter, it being, in my opinion, a matter of great interest, at a time, when in order to account for the present notoriously bad living of the people of England, it is asserted, that they are become greatly more numerous than they formerly were. This would be no defence of the Government, even if the fact were so; but, as I have, over and over again, proved, the fact is false; and, to this I challenge denial, that, either churches and great mansions and castles were formerly made without hands; or, England was, seven hundred years ago, much more populous than it is now. But, what has the formation of the New Forest to do with this? A great deal; for the historians tell us, that, in order to make this Forest, WILLIAM the CONQUEROR destroyed ‘many populous towns and villages, and thirty-six parish churches’! The devil he did! How populous, then, good God, must England have been at that time, which was about the year 1090; that is to say, 736 years ago! For, the Scotch will hardly contend, that the nature of the soil has been changed for the worse, since that time, especially as it has not been cultivated. No, no; brassey as they are, they will not do that. Come, then, let us see how this matter stands.

  This Forest has been crawled upon by favourites, and is now much smaller than it used to be. A time may, and WILL come, for inquiring HOW George Rose, and others, became owners of some of the very best parts of this once-public property; a time for such inquiry MUST come, before the people of England will ever give their consent to a reduction of the interest of the debt! But, this we know, that the New Forest formerly extended, westward, from the SOUTHAMPTON WATER and the River OUX, to the River AVON and northward, from LYMINGTON HAVEN to the borders of WILTSHIRE. We know, that this was its utmost extent; and we know also, that the towns of CHRISTCHURCH, LYMINGTON, RINGWOOD, and FORDINGBRIDGE, and the villages of BOLDER, FAWLEY, LYNDHURST, DIPDEN, ELING, MINSTED, and all the other villages that now have churches; we know, I say (and, pray mark it), that all these towns and villages EXISTED BEFORE THE NORMAN CONQUEST; because the Roman names of several of them (all the towns) are in print, and because an account of them all is to be found in DOOMSDAY BOOK, which was made by this very WILLIAM the CONQUEROR. Well, then, now Scotch population-liars, and you MALTHUSIAN blasphemers, who contend that God has implanted in man a PRINCIPLE that leads him to starvation; come, now, and face this history of the New Forest. COOKE, in his GEOGRAPHY of Hampshire, says, that the Conqueror destroyed here ‘many populous towns and villages, and thirty-six parish churches’. The same writer says, that, in the time of Edward the Confessor (just before the Conqueror came), ‘two-thirds of the Forest was inhabited and cultivated’. GUTHRIE says nearly the same thing. But, let us hear the two historians, who are now pitted against each other, HUME and LINGARD. The former (vol. II. p. 277) says: ‘There was one pleasure to which William, as well as all the Normans and ancient Saxons, was extremely addicted, and that was hunting: but this pleasure he indulged more at the expense of his unhappy subjects, whose interests he always disregarded, than to the loss or diminution of his own revenue. Not content with those large forests, which former kings possessed, in all parts of England, he resolved to make a new Forest, near Winchester, the usual place of his residence: and, for that purpose, he laid waste the county of Hampshire, for an extent of thirty miles, expelled the inhabitants from their houses, seized their property, even demolished churches and convents, and made the sufferers no compensation for the injury.’ Pretty well for a pensioned Scotchman: and, now let us hear Dr LINGARD, to prevent his Society from presenting whose work to me, the sincere and pious SAMUEL BUTLER was ready to go down upon his marrow-bones; let us hear the good Doctor upon this subject. He says (vol. I. p. 452 & 453), ‘Though the King possessed sixty-eight forests, besides parks and chases, in different parts of England, he was not yet satisfied, but for the occasional accommodation of his court, afforested an extensive tract of country lying between the city of Winchester and the sea coast. The inhabitants were expelled: the cottages and the churches were burnt: and more than thirty square miles of a rich and populous district were withdrawn from cultivation, and converted into a wilderness, to afford sufficient range for the deer, and ample space for the royal diversion. The memory of this act of despotism has been perpetuated in the name of the NEW FOREST, which it retains at the present day, after the lapse of seven hundred and fifty years.’

  ‘Historians’ should be careful how they make statements relative to places which are within the scope of the reader’s inspection. It is next to impossible not to believe, that the Doctor has, in this case (a very interesting one), merely copied from HUME. Hume says, that the King ‘expelled the inhabitants’; and Lingard says ‘the inhabitants were expelled’: Hume says, that the king ‘demolished the churches’; and Lingard says, that ‘the churches were burnt’; but, Hume says, churches ‘and convents ’, and Lingard knew that to be a lie. The Doctor was too learned upon the subject of ‘convents’, to follow the Scotchman here. Hume says, that the king ‘laid waste the country for an extent of thirty miles’. The Doctor says, that ‘a district of thirty square miles was withdrawn from cultivation, and converted into a wilderness’. Now, what HUME meaned by the loose phrase, ‘an extent of thirty miles’, I cannot say; but this I know, that Dr LINGARD’S ‘thirty square miles’, is a piece of ground only five and a half miles each way! So that the Doctor has got here a curious ‘district’, and a not less curious ‘wilderness’; and, what number of churches could WILLIAM find to burn, in a space of five miles and a half each way? If the Doctor meaned thirty miles square, instead of square miles, the falsehood is so monstrous as to destroy his credit for ever; for, here we have NINE HUNDRED SQUARE MILES, containing five hundred and seventy-six thousand acres of land; that is to say, 56,960 acres more than are contained in the whole of the county of Surrey, and 99,840 acres more than are contained in the whole of the county of Berks! This is ‘history’, is it! And these are ‘historians’.

  The true statement is this: the New Forest, according to its ancient state, was bounded thus: by the line, going from the river OUX, to the river AVON, and which line there separates Wiltshire from Hampshire; by the river Avon; by the sea from Christchurch to Calshot Castle; by the Southampton Water; and by the river OUX. These are the boundaries; and (as any one may, by scale and compass, ascertain), there are, within these boundaries, about 224 square miles, containing 143,360 acres of land. Within these limits there are now remaining eleven parish churches, all of which were in existence before the time of William the Conqueror; so that, if he destroyed thirty-six parish churches, what a populous country this must have been! There must have been forty-seven parish church
es; so that there was, over this whole district, one parish church to every four and three quarters square miles! Thus, then, the churches must have stood, on an average, at within one mile and about two hundred yards of each other! And, observe, the parishes could, on an average, contain no more, each, than 2,966 acres of land! Not a very large farm; so that here was a parish church to every large farm, unless these historians are all fools and liars. I defy any one to say that I make hazardous assertions: I have plainly described the ancient boundaries: there are the maps: any one can, with scale and compass, measure the area as well as I can. I have taken the statements of historians, as they call themselves: I have shown that their histories, as they call them, are fabulous; OR (and mind this or) that England was, at one time, and that too, eight hundred years ago, beyond all measure more populous than it is now. For, observe, notwithstanding what Dr LINGARD asserts; notwithstanding that he describes this district as ‘rich’, it is the very poorest in the whole kingdom. Dr LINGARD was, I believe, born and bred at Winchester; and how, then, could he be so careless; or, indeed, so regardless of truth (and I do not see why I am to mince the matter with him), as to describe this as a rich district. Innumerable persons have seen Bagshot-Heath; great numbers have seen the barren heaths between London and Brighton; great numbers, also, have seen that wide sweep of barrenness which exhibits itself between the Golden Farmer Hill and Black-water. Nine-tenths of each of these are less barren than four-fifths of the land in the New Forest. Supposing it to be credible that a man so prudent and so wise as William the Conqueror; supposing that such a man should have pitched upon a rich and populous district wherewith to make a chase; supposing, in short, these historians to have spoken the truth, and supposing this barren land to have been all inhabited and cultivated, and the people so numerous and so rich as to be able to build and endow a parish-church upon every four and three quarters square miles upon this extensive district; supposing them to have been so rich in the produce of the soil as to want a priest to be stationed at every mile and 200 yards in order to help them to eat it; supposing, in a word, these historians not to be the most farcical liars that ever put pen upon paper, this country must, at the time of the Norman conquest, have literally swarmed with people; for, there is the land, now, and all the land, too: neither Hume nor Dr Lingard can change the nature of that. There it is, an acre of it not having, upon an average, so much of productive capacity in it as one single square rod, taking the average, of Worcestershire; and, if I were to say, one single square yard, I should be right; there is the land; and, if that land were as these historians say it was, covered with people and with churches, what the devil must Worcestershire have been! To this, then, we come at last: having made out what I undertook to show; namely, that the historians, as they call themselves, are either the greatest fools or the greatest liars that ever existed, or that England was beyond all measure more populous eight hundred years ago than it is now.

  Poor, however, as this district is, and, culled about as it has been for the best spots of land by those favourites who have got grants of land or leases or something or other, still there are some spots here and there which would grow trees; but, never will it grow trees, or any thing else to the profit of this nation, until it become private property. Public property must, in some cases, be in the hands of public officers; but, this is not an affair of that nature. This is too loose a concern; too little controllable by superiors. It is a thing calculated for jobbing, above all others; calculated to promote the success of favouritism. Who can imagine that the persons employed about plantations and farms for the public, are employed because they are fit for the employment? Supposing the commissioners to hold in abhorrence the idea of paying for services to themselves under the name of paying for services to the public; supposing them never to have heard of such a thing in their lives, can they imagine that nothing of this sort takes place, while they are in London eleven months out of twelve in the year? I never feel disposed to cast much censure upon any of the persons engaged in such concerns. The temptation is too great to be resisted. The public must pay for every thing à pois d’or. Therefore, no such thing should be in the hands of the public, or, rather, of the government; and I hope to live to see this thing completely taken out of the hands of this government.

  It was night-fall when we arrived at Eling, that is to say, at the head of the Southampton Water. Our horses were very hungry. We stopped to bait them and set off just about dusk to come to this place (Weston Grove), stopping at Southampton on our way and leaving a letter to come to London. Between Southampton and this place, we cross a bridge over the Itchen river, and, coming up a hill into a common, which is called Town-hill Common, we passed, lying on our right, a little park and house, occupied by the Irish Bible-man, LORD ASHDOWN, I think they call him, whose real name is FRENCH, and whose family are so very well known in the most unfortunate sister-kingdom. Just at the back of his house, in another sort of paddock-place, lives a man, whose name I forget, who was, I believe, a coachmaker in the East Indies, and whose father, or uncle, kept a turnpike gate at Chelsea, a few years ago. See the effects of ‘industry and enterprize’! But even these would be nothing, were it not for this wondrous system by which money can be snatched away from the labourer in this very parish, for instance, sent off to the East Indies, there help to make a mass to put into the hands of an adventurer, and then the mass may be brought back into the pockets of the adventurer and cause him to be called a ‘Squire by the labourer whose earnings were so snatched away! Wondrous system! Pity it cannot last for ever! Pity that it has got a debt of a thousand millions to pay! Pity that it cannot turn paper into gold! Pity that it will make such fools of Prosperity Robinson and his colleagues!

  The moon shone very bright by the time that we mounted the hill; and now, skirting the enclosures upon the edge of the common, we passed several of those cottages which I so well recollected, and in which I had the satisfaction to believe that the inhabitants were sitting comfortably with bellies full by a good fire. It was eight o’clock before we arrived at Mr Chamberlayne’s, whom I had not seen since, I think, the year 1816; for, in the fall of that year I came to London, and I never returned to Botley (which is only about three miles and a half from Weston) to stay there for any length of time. To those who like water scenes (as nineteen-twentieths of people do) it is the prettiest spot, I believe, in all England. Mr CHAMBERLAYNE built the house about twenty years ago. He has been bringing the place to greater and greater perfection from that time to this. All round about the house is in the neatest possible order. I should think that, altogether, there cannot be so little as ten acres of short grass; and, when I say that, those who know any thing about gardens will form a pretty correct general notion as to the scale on which the thing is carried on. Until of late, Mr Chamberlayne was owner of only a small part, comparatively, of the lands hereabouts. He is now the owner, I believe, of the whole of the lands that come down to the water’s edge and that lie between the ferry over the Itchen at Southampton, and the river which goes out from the Southampton Water at Hamble. And, now let me describe, as well as I can, what this land and its situation are. The Southampton Water begins at Portsmouth, and goes up by Southampton, to Redbridge, being upon an average, about two miles wide, having, on the one side, the New Forest, and on the other side, for a great part of the way, this fine and beautiful estate of Mr Chamberlayne. Both sides of this water have rising lands divided into hill and dale, and very beautifully clothed with trees, the woods and lawns and fields being most advantageously intermixed. It is very curious that, at the back of each of these tracts of land, there are extensive heaths, on this side as well as on the New Forest side. To stand here and look across the water at the New Forest, you would imagine that it was really a country of woods; for you can see nothing of the heaths from here; those heaths over which we rode, and from which we could see a windmill down among the trees, which windmill is now to be seen just opposite this place. So that, the views from this place are
the most beautiful that can be imagined. You see up the water and down the water, to Redbridge one way and out to Spithead the other way. Through the trees, to the right, you see the spires of Southampton, and you have only to walk a mile over a beautiful lawn and through a not less beautiful wood, to find, in a little dell surrounded with lofty woods, the venerable ruins of NETLEY ABBEY, which make part of Mr Chamberlayne’s estate. The woods here are chiefly of oak; the ground consists of a series of hill and dale, as you go long-wise from one end of the estate to the other, about six miles in length. Down almost every little valley that divides these hills or hillocks, there is more or less of water, making the underwood, in those parts, very thick, and dark to go through, and these form the most delightful contrast with the fields and lawns. There are innumerable vessels of various sizes continually upon the water; and, to those that delight in water-scenes, this is certainly the very prettiest place that I ever saw in my life. I had seen it many years ago; and, as I intended to come here on my way home, I told GEORGE, before we set out, that I would show him another Weston before we got to London. The parish in which his father’s house is, is also called Weston, and a very beautiful spot it certainly is; but I told him I questioned whether I could not show him a still prettier Weston than that. We let him alone for the first day. He sat in the house and saw great multitudes of pheasants and partridges upon the lawn before the window: he went down to the water-side by himself, and put his foot upon the ground to see the tide rise. He seemed very much delighted. The second morning, at breakfast, we put it to him, which he would rather have; this Weston or the Weston he had left in Herefordshire; but, though I introduced the question in a way almost to extort a decision in favour of the Hampshire Weston, he decided instantly and plump for the other, in a manner very much to the delight of Mr Chamberlayne and his sister. So true it is, that, when people are uncorrupted, they always like home best, be it, in itself, what it may.