Purkiss the Charcoal-burner

William Rufus was killed by an arrow while hunting in the New Forest on 2 August 1100. Tradition said that at sundown a charcoal burner named Purkiss, driving home with his cart, found the body, lifted it in and carried it towards Winchester with the blood dripping through the boards, and was given an acre or two of land for the service. Chambers reported that a lineal descendant of the same name still lived in the hut on that land and burnt charcoal, the family never richer nor poorer, always with a horse and cart but never a team; one of them in the last century was said to have burnt the cart’s yew axletree in a temper. A saying of the neighbourhood held that in old days a squirrel could be hunted six miles through those woods without touching the ground.