nd sum.

On the other had, the King seized a tract of over sixty thousand acres
in Hampshire for a hunting ground, which he named the New Forest.[1]
It was said that William destroyed many churches and estates in order
to form this forest, but these accounts appear to have been greatly
exaggerated. The real grievance was not so much the appropriation of
the land, which was sterile and of little value, but it was the
enactment of the savage Forest Laws. These ordinances made he life of
a stag of more value than that of a man, and decreed that anyone found
hunting the royal deer should have both eyes torn out (S205).

[1] Forest: As here used, this does not mean a region covered with
woods, but simply a section of country, partially wooded and suitable
for game, set apart as a royal park or hunting ground. As William
made his residence at Winchester, in Hampshire, in the south of
England (see map facing p. 38), he naturally took land in that
vicinity for the chase.

120. The Great Survey; Domesday Book, 1086.

Not quite twenty years after his coronation William ordered a survey
and valuation to be made of the whole realm outside of London. The
only exceptions were certain border counties on the north were war had
left little to record save heaps of ruins and ridges of grass-grown
graves (S109).

The returns of that survey were known as Domesday or Doomsday Book.
The English people said this name was given to it, because, like the
Day of Doom, it spared no one. It recorded every piece of property
and every particular concerning it. As the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle"
(S46) indignantly declared, "not a rood of land, not a peasant's hut,
not an ox, cow, pig, or even a hive of bees escaped."

While the report showed the wealth of the country, it also showed thje
suffering it had passed through in the revolts against William. Many
towns had fallen into decay. Some were nearly depopulated. IN Edward
the Confessor's reign (S65) York had 1607 houses; at the date of the
survey it had but 967, while Oxford, which had had 721 houses, had
then only 243.

The census and assessment proved of the highest importance to William
and his successors. The people indeed said bitterly that the King
kept to book constantly by him, in order "that he might be able to see
at any time of how much more wool the English flock would bear
fleecing." The object of the work, however, was not to extort money,
but to present a full and exact