points in English history, and did more than anything else to turn the Norman barons themselves into the champions of liberty. We cannot, therefore, be surprised that in the New Forest itself they excited the bitterest antagonism. Within the memory of some living, almost every man in the Forest was a poacher. To kill the king's deer was looked upon as no sin. In early times it had worn the mask of patriotism, but though the halo had long departed, public opinion was affected by the tradition.
Even in recent times quite a system of snaring the deer existed. Sometimes hooks were baited with apples; sometimes the fawn's hoof was pared, or a thorn thrust into the foot, in order to keep the doe in one spot until the poacher wanted to kill her. Thus the foresters were never without "mutton," as they called the venison. If one house had not a supply, another had some, and community in lawlessness made them very neighbourly.
Stretching down almost to the seashore, and from its very nature well adapted for the commission of every dark deed under the sun, with a public opinion thus demoralized by ages of oppression, the New Forest was just the place for smuggling to take root and to flourish. At the close of the seventeenth century the narrowest commercial policy prevailed in England, so much so, that during the war with Louis XIV., trade with France was entirely prohibited. The rapid decay of most of the ports on the Channel soon ensued, and many of the inhabitants took to smuggling. Even great capitalists embarked in it, and illicit trade became so extensive that all the efforts of the Government during the whole of the eighteenth century were insufficient to place any effectual bar in its way, much less to put it down. On the Hampshire coast the smugglers grew so bold in their impunity, that at times as many as twenty or thirty waggons laden with kegs, and guarded by two or three hundred horsemen, each horseman bearing some two or three tubs, would come over Hengistbury Heath, making their way in open day past Christ Church into the Forest. The demoralization of the district became so thorough that at one time a gang of desperadoes took possession of Ambrose Cave, on the borders of the Forest, plundering the whole country, and murdering upwards of thirty people, throwing their bodies down a well.
