Death of a king deep in the Forest

“On the morrow of Lammas, King William at the hunt was shot dead with an arrow by one of his own men, and after brought to Winchester and buried.”

Red-haired William Rufus, third son of the Conqueror of 1066, met his sudden end on August 2, 1100.

The event did not meet with universal lamenting, for his strength as a monarch was not matched by his popularity.

“His vices were branded on his face,” wrote William of Malmesbury, the foremost historian of the 12th century, a few years later.

“He was small and thick-set and ill-shaped, yet having enormous strength. His face was redder than his hair and his eyes were of two different colours.”

Harsh and fierce The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says he was harsh and fierce with everyone, greedy and unjust, and susceptible to advice from evil men.

“In his days all justice decline,” adds the history.

William Rufus was stag hunting, his favourite pastime, on the day he died, but the exact place and circumstances are open to dispute.

Canterton Glen, a short distance from Stoney Cross is the most likely location and it was here that a three-sided stone pillar was erected in 1745 to commemorate the event.

“Here stood the oak tree on which an arrow shot by Sir Walter Tyrrell at a stag, glanced and struck King William II, surnamed Rufus, on the breast of which stroke he instantly died,” said the inscription.

The stone, erected by John, Lord Delaware, became a target for Georgian vandals and relic hunters and by 1841 had acquired the inscribed iron casing which remains its suit of armour today.

It is said that on the night before his death, William Rufus dreamt of a stream of blood spurting from his chest, flowing up to heaven and obscuring the light of the sun.

Half the monks and priests in Christendom seem also to have had prophetic dreams.

According to William of Malmesbury, the king was persuaded not to hunt the next morning on account of one such vision.

But after lunch he went into the Forest with a few companions, including his younger brother Henry and a visitor from France, Walter Tyrrell, Count of Poix.

As the day wore on, the group split up, as usual on a hunting trip, leaving the king alone with Tyrrell.

The evening sun was low in the sky when William shot at a stag which passed before him.

He wounded the animal, but not fatally, and shielded his eyes from the sun to watch it run on.

Seeing the king otherwise engaged, Tyrrell considered himself free to fire at a second animal which suddenly appeared.

Some say the arrow glanced a tree, some that it glanced the stag, some that it glanced nothing, but all say that it hit William in the chest.

According to William of Malmesbury, the king uttered not a word but broke off the shaft of the arrow before falling on the remains, which hastened his death.

Tyrrell rode off at speed across the New Forest, heading west and crossing the Avon at a spot near Ringwood which is still known as Tyrrell’s Ford.

From there he made his way to the coast and returned to France while a charcoal burner called Purkiss carted the king’s body to Winchester.

Tyrrell’s hasty exit has been taken as evidence of an assassination plot, but the murder theory is speculative.

Hunting accidents were not uncommon and similar ones in the New Forest had already despatched William’s brother, Richard and a nephew, also Richard.

Medieval writers, without exception, saw the king’s death as an accident or, at worst, the result of reckless shooting by the unfortunate Walter Tyrrell.

With William dead, younger brother Henry hastened to Winchester to claim the throne ahead of his less able brother, Duke Robert of Normandy, who was on a crusade.