In the year 1079, just thirteen years after the battle of Hastings, William ordered its afforestation. From Turner and Lingard down to the latest compiler, our historians have represented the act as one of the worst pieces of cruelty ever committed by an English sovereign. Even Lappenberg calls the site of the Forest “the most thriving part of England,” and says that William “mercilessly caused churches and villages to be burnt down within its circuit;”[9] and, in another place, speaks of the Conqueror’s “bloody sacrifice,” and “glaring cruelty towards the numerous inhabitants.”[10] To such statements in ordinary writers we should pay no attention, but they assume a very different aspect when put forward, especially in so unqualified a way, by a historian to whom our respect and attention are due. I have no wish to defend the character of William. He was one of those men whose wills are strong enough to execute the thoughts of their minds, ordained by necessity to rule others, holding firmly to the creed that success is the best apology for crime. Yet, too, he had noble qualities. Abroad he was feared by the bad, whilst at home such order prevailed throughout England, that a man might travel in safety “with his bosom full of gold” from one end to the other.[11] What I do here protest against is the common practice of implicitly believing every tradition, of repeating every idle story which has been foisted into the text either by credulity or rancorous hatred—of, in fact, mistaking party feeling for history. The Chroniclers had every reason to malign William. His very position was enough. He had pressed with a heavy hand on the Old-English nobles, stripped them of their lands, their civil power, and their religious honours; and failing to learn, had, like a second Attila, tried to uproot their language. The truth is, we are so swayed by our feelings that the most dispassionate writer is involuntarily biassed. We in fact pervert truth without knowing we do so. Language, by its very nature, betrays us. No historian, with the least vividness of style, can copy from another without exaggeration. The misplacement of a single word, the insertion of a single epithet, gives a different colour and tone. And, in this very matter of the New Forest, we need only take the various accounts, as they have come down, to find in them the evidences of their own untruth.[12]