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By the Rev. Canon J. E. Jachson, F.8.A. 28h 
actually a law that every mastiff within the forest should undergo 
what was called expeditation, 7.¢e., should have one of the claws of 
a fore foot cut off, so as to disable him from chasing them. The 
principal landowners, having influence, contrived to get exemption 
for their hounds, and Lord Bath has a very curious document, more 
than six hundred years old, by which the Glastonbury Abbey tenants 
all through Wilts and Somerset were so exempted. It has some 
sixty little seals hanging to it by separate slips of parchment, with 
the arms or devices of what were called ‘the Abbot’s men.” There 
were deer leaps in the forest, ¢.e., low gaps left in the palings or 
walls of gentlemen’s woods or parks, to let the King’s deer have 
entry and free range; but sometimes a fraud, a kind of poaching 
was committed. The gap was made low enough for him to jump 
in easily, but they cut away the ground inside so deep that he could not 
jump outagain. The charge of the forest was given to somenobleman, 
who had under him deputies, rangers, bailiffs, verderers, regarders, 
and agisters, The two things to be closely watched are commonly 
described as the “vert” and “venison.””? By the vert was meant 
all the green wood, great and small. Venison (as used in the Old 
Testament) did not mean, as it does now, merely the flesh of the 
deer, but it was used in the original French form, venaison, hunting, 
and included not only deer, but all animals that might be hunted— 
badgers, foxes, wild cats, wild boars, and wolves. So that a “forest” 
meant the King’s hunting demesne, Under forest law no gentleman 
could enclose his own fields and make a park without a special 
license from the crown. There is a record that the king gave Sir 
William Stourton leave to enclose with paling five hundred acres 
at that time within the royal forest. Sir John Thynne, the founder 
of Longleat, had also leave to enclose a park. 
I may mention in passing that the original park at Longleat was 
only a small affair compared with the present one. It consisted of the 
low ground on the right-hand side of the steep hill which you go down 
on entering, and reached about as far as the kennel where the blood- 
hounds are kept, and thence to the Stalls Farm. There was for 
merly a house there and large dairy farm, called Rodmister. The 
house was pulled down and the materials carried to Longbridge 
