[12]Voltaire was the first to throw any doubt on the generally received account (_Essai sur les Mœurs et l’Esprit des Nations_, tom. iii. ch. xlii. p. 169. _Panthéon Littéraire._ Paris, 1836). He has in England been followed by Warner (_Topographical Remarks on the South-Western Parts of Hampshire_, vol. i. pp. 164-197), and Lewis, in his _Historical Enquiries concerning the New Forest_, pp. 42-55. [13]Concerning the King’s prerogative to make a forest wherever he pleased, and the ancient legal maxim that all beasts of the chase were exclusively his and his alone, see Manwood—_A Treatise of the Lawes of the Forest_, ch. ii. ff. 25-33, and ch. iii. sect. i. f. 33, 1615. We must remember, too, that, before the afforestation, William not only owned by right of conquest, as being King, the large demesne lands of the Crown in the district, and also those estates of former possessors, who had fallen at Hastings, or fled into exile, but, as we know from _Domesday_, kept some—as at Eling, Breamore, and Ringwood—in his own hands. [14]Bouquet. _Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France_, tom. xi., pref., No. xii. p. 14; and tom. xii., pref., No. xlix. pp. 46-48. Some account of him may be found in tom. x. p. 184, foot-note _a_, and in the preface of the same volume, No. xv. p. 28. See also preface to tom. viii., No. xxxi., p. 24, as also p. 254, foot-note _a_. [15]_De Ducibus Normannis_, book vii. c. ix.; in Camden’s _Anglica Scripta_, p. 674. [16]_Chronicon ex Chronicis._ Ed. Thorpe. Vol. ii. p. 45. Published by the English Historical Society. [17]_Historia Ecclesiastica_, pars. iii. lib. x., in the _Patrologiæ Cursus Completus_. Ed. J. P. Migne. Tom. clxxxviii. p. 749 c. Paris, 1855. [18]_De Nugis Curialium Distinctiones Quinque_, distinc. v. cap. vi. p. 222. Published by the Camden Society. [19]_De Eventibus Angliæ_, lib. ii. cap. vii., in Twysden’s _Historiæ Anglicanæ Scriptores Decem_, p. 2373. I am almost ashamed to quote Knyghton, but it is as well to give the most unfavourable account. Spotswood, in his _History of the Church of Scotland_ (book ii. p. 30, fourth edition, 1577), repeats the same blunder as Walter Mapes and Knyghton, adding that the New Forest was at Winchester, and that Rufus destroyed thirty churches.