The Children of the New Forest | Page 2

protect them;
but, as will appear by our history, this was not at that period possible.
The life of a king and many other lives were in jeopardy, and the

orphans remained at Arnwood, still under the care of their elderly
relation, at the time that our history commences.
The New Forest, my readers are perhaps aware, was first inclosed by
William the Conqueror as a royal forest for his own amusement--for in
those days most crowned heads were passionately fond of the chase;
and they may also recollect that his successor, William Rufus, met his
death in this forest by the glancing of an arrow shot by Sir Walter
Tyrrell. Since that time to the present day it has continued a royal
domain. At the period of which we are writing, it had an establishment
of verderers and keepers, paid by the crown, amounting to some forty
or fifty men. At the commencement of the civil war they remained at
their posts, but soon found, in the disorganized state of the country, that
their wages were no longer to be obtained; and then, when the king had
decided upon raising an army, Beverley, who held a superior office in
the Forest, enrolled all the young and athletic men who were employed
in the Forest, and marched them away with him to join the king's army.
Some few remained, their age not rendering their services of value, and
among them was an old and attached servant of Beverley, a man above
sixty years of age, whose name was Jacob Armitage, and who had
obtained the situation through Colonel Beverley's interest. Those who
remained in the Forest lived in cottages many miles asunder, and
indemnified themselves for the non-payment of their salaries by killing
the deer for sale and for their own subsistence.
The cottage of Jacob Armitage was situated on the skirts of the New
Forest, about a mile and a half from the mansion of Arnwood; and
when Colonel Beverley went to join the king's troops, feeling how little
security there would be for his wife and children in those troubled
times, he requested the old man, by his attachment to the family, not to
lose sight of Arnwood, but to call there as often as possible to see if he
could be of service to Mrs. Beverley. The colonel would have
persuaded Jacob to have altogether taken up his residence at the
mansion, but to this the old man objected. He had been all his life under
the greenwood tree, and could not bear to leave the forest. He promised
the colonel that he would watch over his family, and ever be at hand
when required; and he kept his word. The death of Colonel Beverley

was a heavy blow to the old forester, and he watched over Mrs.
Beverley and the orphans with the greatest solicitude; but when Mrs.
Beverley followed her husband to the tomb, he then redoubled his
attentions, and was seldom more than a few hours at a time away from
the mansion. The two boys were his inseparable companions, and he
instructed them, young as they were, in all the secrets of his own
calling. Such was the state of affairs at the time that King Charles made
his escape from Hampton Court; and I now shall resume my narrative
from where it was broken off.
As soon as the escape of Charles I. was made known to Cromwell and
the Parliament, troops of horse were dispatched in every direction to
the southward, toward which the prints of the horses' hoofs proved that
he had gone. As they found that he had proceeded in the direction of
the New Forest, the troops were subdivided and ordered to scour the
forest, in parties of twelve to twenty, while others hastened down to
Southampton, Lymington, and every other seaport or part of the coast
from which the king might be likely to embark. Old Jacob had been at
Arnwood on the day before, but on this day he had made up his mind to
procure some venison, that he might not go there again empty-handed;
for Miss Judith Villiers was very partial to venison, and was not slow to
remind Jacob, if the larder was for many days deficient in that meat.
Jacob had gone out accordingly; he had gained his leeward position of
a fine buck, and was gradually nearing him by stealth--now behind a
huge oak tree, and then crawling through the high fern, so as to get
within shot unperceived, when on a sudden the animal, which had been
quietly feeding, bounded away and disappeared in the thicket. At the
same time Jacob perceived a small body of horse galloping through the
glen in which the buck had been feeding. Jacob had never yet