One thing, however, that William did made the English very angry. He was extremely fond of hunting, but there was no good place where he could hunt near London. So in order to have a place for hunting, he destroyed a large number of village houses and farms and turned that part of the country into a forest. This was called the New Forest, and though it is now nearly nine hundred years _old_ it is still called New to this day. But on the whole, William, although descended from a pirate, gave England a good government and made it a much safer and better place in which to live than it ever had been under its former rulers. So 1066 was almost like the Year 1 for the English. We think it is remarkable when children of low-bred immigrants become society leaders, when, as we say, they rise from overalls to dress-suits, but here we have the son’s son of a pirate rising to be king of England, and those living now who find they are descended from him brag of it! [Illustration] 51 A Great Adventure Have you ever played the game called “Going to Jerusalem” in which every one scrambles to get a seat when the music stops playing? Well, all during the Dark Ages “Going to Jerusalem” was not a game but a real journey which Christians everywhere in Europe wanted to take and did take if they could. They wanted to see the actual spot where Christ had been crucified, to pray at the Holy Sepulcher, and to bring back a palm-leaf as a souvenir, which they could show their friends, hang on the wall, and talk about all the rest of their lives. So there were always some good Christians--and also some bad ones--“going to Jerusalem.” Sometimes they went all by themselves, but more often they went with others. As of course there were no such things as trains in those days, poor people had to walk nearly the whole way from France and from England, from Spain and from Germany, and so it took them many months and sometimes years to reach Jerusalem. These travelers were called _pilgrims_, and their trip was called a _pilgrimage_. Jerusalem at that time belonged to the Turks, who were Mohammedans. The Turks did not like these Christian pilgrims who came to see Christ’s tomb, and they didn’t treat them very well. Indeed, some of the pilgrims on their return told frightful stories of the way they had been treated by the Turks and the way the holy places in Jerusalem were also treated. Just before the Year 1100 there was a pope at Rome named Urban. He was the head of all the Christians in the world. Urban heard these tales that the pilgrims told, and he was shocked. He thought it was a terrible thing, anyway, for the Holy City, as Jerusalem was called, and the Holy Land, where Jerusalem was located, to be ruled over by Mohammedans instead of by Christians. So Urban made a speech and urged all good Christians everywhere to get together and go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, with the idea of fighting the Turks and taking the city of Jerusalem away from them.