1 8 WHITE 



there is such an inherent spirit for hunting in human nature, 

 as scarce any inhibitions can restrain. Hence, towards the 

 beginning of this century all this country was wild about deer- 

 stealing. Unless he was a hunter, as they affected to call 

 themselves, no young person was allowed to be possessed of 

 manhood or gallantry. The Waltham blacks at length com- 

 mitted such enormities, that government was forced to interfere 

 with that severe and sanguinary act called the " Black Act," 1 

 which now comprehends more felonies than any law that ever 

 was framed before. And, therefore, a late Bishop of Win- 

 chester, when urged to re-stock Waltham Chase, 2 refused, from 

 a motive worthy of a prelate, replying " that it had done mis- 

 chief enough already." 



Our old race of deer-stealers is hardly extinct yet : it was but 

 a little while ago that, over their ale, they used to recount the 

 exploits of their youth ; such as watching the pregnant hind 

 to her lair, and, when the calf was dropped, paring its feet with 

 a penknife to the quick to prevent its escape, till it was large 

 and fat enough to be killed ; the shooting at one of their neigh- 

 bors with a bullet in a turnip-field by moonshine, mistaking 

 him for a deer ; and the losing a dog in the following extraor- 

 dinary manner : Some fellows, suspecting that a calf new-fallen 

 was deposited in a certain spot of thick fern, went, with a 

 lurcher, to surprise it ; when the parent-hind rushed out of the 

 brake, and, taking a vast spring with all her feet close together, 

 pitched upon the neck of the dog, and broke it short in two. 3 



Another temptation to idleness and sporting was a number 

 of rabbits, which possessed all the hillocks and dry places : but 

 these being inconvenient to the huntsmen, on account of their 

 burrows, when they came to take away the deer, they permitted 

 the country-people to destroy them all. 



Such forests and wastes, when their allurements to irregu- 

 larities are removed, are of considerable service to neighbor- 

 hoods that verge upon them, by furnishing them with peat and 

 turf for their firing ; with fuel for the burning their lime ; and 

 with ashes for their grasses ; and by maintaining their geese 

 and their stock of young cattle at little or no expense. 



The manor farm of the parish of Greatham has an admitted 

 claim, I see (by an old record taken from the Tower of Lon- 



