80 EXTINCT BRITISH ANIMALS. 
nets, to which he replies: ‘ Yes, I pursue the wild 
animals with swift hounds.” He next enumerates 
the different kinds of game which the Saxon hunter 
usually hunted—“ I take harts, and boars, and deer, 
and roes, and sometimes hares.” ‘“ Yesterday,” he 
continues, ‘I took two harts and a boar... . the 
harts with nets, and I slew the boar with my weapon.” 
“‘ How were you so hardy as to slay a boar?” “ My 
hounds drove him to me, and I, there facing him, 
suddenly struck him down.” ‘ You were very bold, 
then.” “A hunter must not be timid, for various 
wild beasts dwell in the woods.” 
The Welsh laws of Howel Dha (A.D. 940, jide 
Spelman and Llwyd,) provided (cap. xvi. § 10) that 
the wild boar should be hunted between the ninth 
of November and the first of December, but later on, 
in Edward II.’s time the season for hunting the 
boar was between Christmas Day and Candlemas 
Day (Feb. 2). 
Edward the Confessor, whose disposition seems to 
have been suited rather to the cloister than to the 
throne, would join in no secular amusement but the 
chase. According to William of Malmesbury,* he 
took the greatest delight to follow a pack of swift 
hounds in pursuit of game, and to cheer them with 
his voice. He had a royal palace at Brill, or Brehull, 
Bucks, to which he often repaired for the pleasure of 
hunting in his forest of Bernwood. This forest, it is 
said, was much infested by a wild boar, which was 
* “Hist. Reg. Anglorum,” Lib. IL., cap. xiii. 
