[28]Passing over the later and more highly-coloured accounts, we will content ourselves with Florence of Worcester, as more trustworthy, whose words are—“Antiquis enim temporibus, Edwardi scilicet Regis, et aliorum Angliæ Regum predecessorum ejus, hæc regio incolis Dei et ecclesiis nitebat uberrime.” (Thorpe’s edition, as before quoted.) Were this, even in a limited degree, true, the Forest would present the strange anomaly of possessing more churches then than it does now, with a great increase of population. The _Domesday_ census, we may add, makes the inhabitants of that portion which is called “In Novâ Forestâ et circa eam,” a little over two hundred. See Ellis’s _Introduction to Domesday_, vol. ii. p. 450. [29]In support of these statements, I may quote from the Prize Essay on the Farming of Hampshire, published in the _Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England_ (vol. xxii., part ii., No. 48, 1861), and which was certainly not written with any view to historical evidence, but simply from an agricultural point. At pp. 242, 243, the author says: “The outlying New Forest block consists of more recent and unprofitable deposits. This tract appears to the ordinary observer, at first sight, to be a mixed mass of clays, marls, sands, and gravels. The apparent confusion arises from the variety of the strata, from the confined space in which they are deposited, and from the manner in which, on the numerous hills and knolls, they overlie one another, or are concealed by drift gravel.” And again, at pp. 250, 251, he continues: “Of the Burley Walk, the part to the west of Burley Beacon, and round it, is nothing but sand or clay growing rushes, with here and there some ‘bed furze.’... The Upper Bagshots, about Burley Beacon, round by Rhinefield and Denney Lodges, and so on towards Fawley, are hungry sands devoid of staple:” and finally sums up by saying, “half of the 63,000 acres are not worth 1_s._ 6_d._ an acre,” p. 330. [30]In that portion under “In Novâ Forestâ et circa eam.” [31]Warner, vol. ii. p. 33, says Hordle Church was standing when _Domesday_ was made. This is a mistake. It was, however, built soon after, as we know from some grants of Baldwin de Redvers.