Like his father before him, Winchester became his base and from here he extended his father’s feudal system including a significant strengthening of the Forest Laws. Winchester held the treasury and William Rufus was determined that he would control the fortune amassed there. On hearing the news that his father, King William I, was dying, he hurried from St Gervaise in France to Southampton, from where he rode quickly to Winchester. Quite possibly, because of its unusual circumstances, it is the one royal death that we all remember. The life of King William Rufus is inextricably bound to the county of Hampshire but it is his death in Hampshire’s New Forest that seems to have captured the imagination of every schoolchild in England.
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