Note 362 — Chapter XIV · THE NORMAN CONQUEST

Most of William's harsh measures can be justified on the ground that they were designed to promote the ultimate welfare of his people. This is not true, however, of his elaborate forest laws, which undertook to deprive Englishmen of their accustomed freedom of hunting when and where they pleased. William's love of the chase amounted to a passion and he was not satisfied with merely enacting such stringent measures as that the slayer of a hart or a hind in his forests should be blinded, but also set apart a great stretch of additional country, the so-called New Forest, as his own exclusive hunting grounds.