Thus it came to pass that there were in almost every district stretches of forest land, which were, in a great degree, open to the people, where men could fell timber for their dwellings and slaughter animals for food; though even before the Norman Conquest had come as a shadow on the liberties of Englishmen, there is reason for thinking that forestal-rights had become, in name at least, a privilege of the king and his great theïgns. The Norman Forest Law was of a similar character to that which William's forefathers had enforced in Normandy. The country, which we have for ages known as France, was, in earlier times, broken up into many provinces, and it was only by a slow process that it became one. Each of these provinces had a Forest Law of its own. When the Normans settled in the goodly land which they called after themselves, they retained the customs which they found there. When William transferred the laws of his old duchy to his new kingdom, it could, at the first, only be by an act of favour that anyone could kill a beast of chase except himself or his retainers. This from the nature of things did not last long. William never could have intended to retain the whole of the vast territories which the victory of Senlac had given him in his own possession. He divided the kingdom among his chief tenants--tenants _in capite_,--and to these great men, with some slight exceptions, he handed over all forestal rights which existed in their domains, the king retaining to himself for his own pleasure, and as a mark of dignity, some great forests, which for ages have remained in royal hands. Notwithstanding certain Danish and Saxon charters, it has always been traditionally held that our Forest Laws come from William the First, and this is substantially true, though objections to the statement might be taken. It would not be unsafe to say that no one but the Conqueror could have enforced so drastic a regulation. As the Bishop of Oxford has so truly said, "The King made and kept good peace. The Dane-geld and the Forest-Law were not too much to pay for the escape from private war and feudal disruption."[9] It is true that William had desolated large tracts of land to make them serve him for the chase; the crime was terrible, though exaggerated by modern historians; but he had many noble qualities, so that those who had not personally suffered were willing to overlook the evil. With his son, William the Red, the Forest Laws became unbearable, and were hated by baron and villain alike. He was one of the worst kings which ever disgraced the English throne. In a deeply religious age he was wantonly opposed to all godliness. Alike the enemy of God and Man, a type and representative of all things evil, we need not wonder when he fell by an arrow in the New Forest, that men saw a visible judgment of God.