There are various accounts in the Chroniclers as to
the stature of William the First; some represent him
as a giant, others as of just or middle height.
Considering the vulgar inclination to attribute to
a hero’s stature the qualities of the mind (and
putting out of all question the arguments that rest
on the pretended size of the disburied bones—for
which the authorities are really less respectable
than those on which we are called upon to believe that
the skeleton of the mythical Gawaine measured eight
feet), we prefer that supposition, as to the physical
proportions, which is most in harmony with the usual
laws of Nature. It is rare, indeed, that a great
intellect is found in the form of a giant.
Game Laws before the Conquest.
Under the Saxon kings a man might, it is true, hunt
in his own grounds, but that was a privilege that
could benefit few but thegns; and over cultivated
ground or shire-land there was not the same sport
to be found as in the vast wastes called forest-land,
and which mainly belonged to the kings.
Edward declares, in a law recorded in a volume of
the Exchequer, “I will that all men do abstain
from hunting in my woods, and that my will shall be
obeyed under penalty of life.” [280]
Edgar, the darling monarch of the monks, and, indeed,
one of the most popular of the Anglo-Saxon kings,
was so rigorous in his forest-laws that the thegns
murmured as well as the lower husbandmen, who had been
accustomed to use the woods for pasturage and boscage.
Canute’s forest-laws were meant as a liberal
concession to public feeling on the subject; they
are more definite than Edgar’s, but terribly
stringent; if a freeman killed one of the king’s
deer, or struck his forester, he lost his freedom
and became a penal serf (white theowe)—
that is, he ranked with felons. Nevertheless,
Canute allowed bishops, abbots, and thegns to hunt
in his woods—a privilege restored by Henry
iii. The nobility, after the Conquest, being
excluded from the royal chases, petitioned to enclose
parks, as early even as the reign of William I.; and
by the time of his son, Henry I., parks became so
common as to be at once a ridicule and a grievance.
Belin’s Gate.
Verstegan combats the Welsh antiquaries who would
appropriate this gate to the British deity Bal or
Beli; and says, if so, it would not have been called
by a name half Saxon, half British, gate (geat) being
Saxon; but rather Belinsport than Belinsgate.
This is no very strong argument; for, in the Norman
time, many compound words were half Norman, half Saxon.
But, in truth, Belin was a Teuton deity, whose worship
pervaded all Gaul; and the Saxons might either have
continued, therefore, the name they found, or given
it themselves from their own god. I am not inclined,
however, to contend that any deity, Saxon or British,
gave the name, or that Billing is not, after all, the
right orthography. Billing, like all words ending
in ing, has something very Danish in its sound; and
the name is quite as likely to have been given by
the Danes as by the Saxons.
