A stirrup hangs
in Lyndhurst Hall, said to be that which he used on that fatal day. The
charcoal-burner was named Purkess. There are Purkesses still in the
village of Minstead, near where William Rufus died. And the story runs
that the earthly possessions of the Purkess family have ever since been
a single horse and cart. A stone marks the spot where the king fell, on
it is the inscription,--
"Here stood the oak-tree on which the arrow, shot by Walter Tyrrell at a
stag, glanced and struck King William II., surnamed Rufus, on the
breast; of which stroke he instantly died on the second of August, 1100.
"That the spot where 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.
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