King William Rufus of England wasn’t really paying much attention to the political and social chaos around him when, exactly 904 years ago, he decided to go hunting in the royal hunting reserve of Nova Foresta founded in 1079 by his father, William the Conquerer. Rufus was short in stature and even shorter in temper. Through his violent nature, he royally justified his collection of enemies who, in keeping with the social order of the day, tended to solve their problems with a
well-placed arrow.

Rufus should have remembered that when he mounted his horse that morning of the 2nd of August 1100 and set out into the New Forest to hunt deer, his brothers and noblemen in tow. Hours later, as an arrow pierced his heart, he fell from the saddle and died straddled across a stone that still marks the spot today. Days later a peasant found his body and carted it off to
Winchester.

The fateful arrow had come from the bow of Sir Walter Tyrrell who split the scene, made a pit stop at the local blacksmith to have him reverse his horse’s shoes to disguise his direction, then rushed off to France to duck below radar.

The point of the story, quite apart from its history-altering consequences, is the fact that horses in feudal times were central to every aspect of life, regal and simple. And there was never a lack of wild stock to draw new mounts from. The local ponies of the New Forest were a breed relied on for their hardiness, strength and sure-footedness. They were found
everywhere in the ancient forest that stretched across southern England. King Canute’s Forest Law of 1016 listed them among the other wild animals of the region.
On a visit to England and a drive through the New Forest this summer, I saw ponies everywhere in the 571-square-kilometer heritage area that just two months ago became a National Park. The landscape of meadow, gorse, moorland, and mixed forest
was dotted with small groups of broodmares and nursing foals. Averaging 13-14 hands in height, and a mixture of bays, browns, chestnuts, and greys, they were a tough, sassy lot with thick tails and tangled manes from months in the bracken. Foals ate, slept and played with each other while mares contentedly rested or grazed.

ow rings everywhere. Balanced with a heritage of toughness from centuries of forest living, they can have an extraordinary docile nature. Grazing on lawns and the side of the road, the ponies were readily approachable and showed little of the flightiness of Canadian wild herds.

King William Rufus, with his wild temper tantrums, could have learned a lot about patience and tolerance from these ancient ponies of an ancient forest. They sure learned the art of survival and how to duck arrows better than that leader of a distant feudal time.

Within the Park that sprawls across Hampshire and parts of Dorset, 3,500 ponies roam and graze freely. Local residents, living on farms or in villages in the Forest, own the ponies. The residents are ‘Commoners’ because the title deeds to their properties grant them a common right of pasture, a privilege extended since King William’s day when peasants were begrudgingly allowed to graze livestock in the forest. Grazing by the ponies, deer, cattle and sheep is today an invaluable
land management measure to maintain grassy meadows and hold back the ever-encroaching gorse and brush.

“The grazing is still controlled by the Verderers of the New Forest,” explained Jane Murray, Secretary of the New Forest Pony Breeding and Cattle Society. “They are the body that administers the common rights of the forest. All the ponies free-range but each one is owned by someone. The stallions are out right now (June) but they have to be in (the pens) by 4 July to control breeding so that the mares will deliver next spring.”
The ponies are rounded up every fall in events called ‘drifts’. About 40 drifts are held from August to the end of October.

The ponies are herded into pens, examined, sorted, branded, and entered into horse sales. The foals are weaned from their dams and the next year’s breeding stock is then released back into the forest to overwinter.

Through the centuries, various bloodlines have been introduced to improve the looks and increase the height of New Forest ponies and stud books began to appear in the early 1900s. But since the mid-1930s no outside blood has been allowed into the breed. In 1960 the New Forest Pony Breeding & Cattle Society started to publish its own Stud Book and has done so ever
since.

New Forest ponies are immensely popular in every discipline of riding and for centuries they were working farm stock. They are a wonderful child’s mount and are successful in show rings everywhere. Balanced with a heritage of toughness from centuries of forest living, they can have an extraordinary docile nature. Grazing on lawns and the side of the road, the ponies were readily approachable and showed little of the flightiness of Canadian wild herds.

King William Rufus, with his wild temper tantrums, could have learned a lot about patience and tolerance from these ancient ponies of an ancient forest. They sure learned the art of survival and how to duck arrows better than that leader of a distant feudal time.

Read Margaret Evans' column "In The Shadow Of Equus" each month in The Pacific & Prairie Horse Journal