Note 28 — Chapter III · ITS EARLY HISTORY.

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.