NEW FOREST of Hampshire, in England, is a tract of at least forty miles in compass, which had many populous town and villages, and thirty-six mother churches, until it was destroyed and turned into a forest by William the Conqueror. As this large tract lay many ages exposed to invasions from foreigners, Henry VIII. built some castles in it. It is situated in that part of Hampshire which is bounded on the east by Southampton River, and on the south by the British Channel. It possesses advantages of situation, with respect to the convenience of water carriage and nearness to the dock-yards, superior to every other forest, having in its neighbourhood several ports and places of shelter for shipping timber, amongst which Lymington is at the distance of only two miles, Bewley about half a mile, and Redbridge three or four miles from the forest; and the navigation to Portsmouth, the most considerable dock-yard in the kingdom, is only about thirty miles from the nearest of these places. This is the only forest belonging to the crown of which the origin is known. Doomsday-book contains the most distinct account of its afforestation by William the Conqueror. The contents of every field, farm, or estate, afforested, in hides, carucates, or virgates, by which the extent of land was then computed, together with the names of the hundreds and villages, and of the former proprietors, which are for the most part Saxon; the rent or yearly value of each possession, and the tax which had been paid for it to the crown during the reign of Edward the Confessor, before the inhabitants were expelled, and that part of the country laid waste; are all to be found in that curious and venerable record. Wishing to discover the original extent of the forest, we had extracted all that relates to it in that ancient survey; but the extract is far too voluminous for insertion. The names of many of the places having since that time [7:16:158]been changed, it is difficult to ascertain with precision what were then the limits of the forest. The oldest perambulation we have met with is amongst the Pleas of the Forest, in the eighth year of Edward I. preserved in the chapter-house at Westminster. The boundaries there described include all the country from Southampton River on the east to the Avon on the west, following the seacoast as far as the southern boundary between these rivers, and extending northwards as far as North Chadeford, or North Charford, on the west, and to Wade and Ower-bridge on the east; and the greater part, if not the whole, of that extensive district, is mentioned in Doomsday-book as the forest belonging to the crown. Another perambulation was however made in the twenty-ninth of the same king, and leaves out a great part of the country contained in the former. This perambulation, which is preserved in the Tower of London, confines the forest to limits which, as far as can be traced, appear to have been followed in the twenty-second year of Charles II. when the forest was again perambulated. By the Charta de Foresta, all lands not belonging to the crown which had been afforested by Henry II. Richard I. or King John, were to be disafforested; but as no provision was made for the reduction of the more ancient afforestations, it is easy to account for the great diminution of this forest in the reign of Edward I. who was not a prince likely to submit to any encroachment on his rights. The perambulation of the twenty-second of Charles II. is the last which is found upon record, and contains the actual legal bounds of the forest. According to the perambulation last mentioned, and the plan founded thereon, the forest extends from Godshill on the north-west to the sea on the south-east, about twenty miles, and from Hardley on the east to Ringwood on the west, about fifteen miles, and contains within those limits about 92,365 acres statute measure. The whole of that quantity, however, was not forest land, nor is it now the property of the crown. There are several manors and other considerable freehold estates within the perambulation, belonging to individuals, to the amount of about 24,797 acres; about 625 acres are copyhold or customary lands belonging to his majesty’s manor of Lyndhurst; about 1004 acres are lease-hold under the crown, granted for certain terms of years, and forming part of the demised land revenue, under the management of the surveyor-general of crown lands; about 901 acres are purprestures or encroachments on the forest; about 1193 acres more are enclosed lands held by the master-keepers and groom-keepers, with their respective lodges; and the remainder, being about 63,845 acres, consists of woods and waste lands of the forest. To perpetuate the spot where William Rufus was killed by the glance of an arrow shot at a stag, a triangular stone was erected in 1745.