an event so memorable had happened might not
hereafter be unknown, this stone was set up by John, Lord Delaware, who
had seen the tree growing in this place, anno 1745."

We may end by saying that England was revenged; the retribution for
which her children had prayed had overtaken the race of the pirate
king. That broad domain of Saxon England, which William the Conqueror
had wrested from its owners to make himself a hunting-forest, was
reddened with the blood of two of his sons and a grandson. The hand of
Heaven had fallen on that cruel race. The New Forest was consecrated in
the blood of one of the Norman kings.

_HOW THE WHITE SHIP SAILED._

Henry I., king of England, had made peace with France. Then to Normandy
went the king with a great retinue, that he might have Prince William,
his only and dearly-loved son, acknowledged as his successor by the
Norman nobles and married to the daughter of the Count of Anjou. Both
these things were done; regal was the display, great the rejoicing, and
on the 25th of November, 1120, the king and his followers, with the
prince and his fair young bride, prepared to embark at Barfleur on their
triumphant journey home.

So far all had gone well. Now disaster lowered. Fate had prepared a
tragedy that was to load the king's soul with life-long grief and yield
to English history one of its most pathetic tales.

Of the vessels of the fleet, one of the best was a fifty-oared galley
called "The White Ship," commanded by a certain Thomas Fitzstephen,
whose father had sailed the ship on which William the Conqueror first
came to England's shores. This service Fitzstephen represented to the
king, and begged that he might be equally honored.

"My liege," he said, "my father steered the ship with the golden boy
upon the prow in which your father sailed to conquer England, I beseech
you to grant me the same honor, that of carrying you in the White Ship
to England."

"I am sorry, friend," said the king, "that my vessel is already chosen,
and that I cannot sail with the son of the man who served my father. But
the prince and all his company shall go along with you in the White
Ship, which you may esteem an honor equal to that of carrying me."

By evening of that day the king with his retinue had set sail, with a
fair wind, for England's shores, leaving the prince with his attendants
to follow in Fitzstephen's ship. With the prince were his natural
brother Richard, his sister the cou