3IO THE ESSEX FOXHOUNDS. 



in those days, tell what bucks were shot by the Queen 

 and the ladies and gentlemen of her suite. 



In the latter part of the Queen's reign, the neglect 

 of the laws again led to great irregularities ; and James I. 

 had sat on the throne for hardly a year, when he 

 violently scolded his subjects for their ill -manners in 

 interfering with the sport of himself and his family, 

 threatening not only to enforce the Forest Laws against 

 all stealers and hunters of deer, and to exempt them 

 from his general pardon, but to debar any person of 

 quality so offending from his presence, and to proceed 

 by martial law against those who provoked his dis- 

 pleasure. 



He had hoped, he said, seeing his subjects knew how 

 greatly he delighted in hunting, that none would have 

 offered offence to him in his sports ; gentlemen of the 

 better sort had behaved as those who knew their duty, but 

 not so some of the baser sort ; there had been more offences 

 since his last coming forth to his progress than even in the 

 late Queen's time, when her years being less fit for recrea- 

 tion, the game was less carefully preserved. Such offences 

 showed insolence and want of reason, and he wondered, 

 seeing he had shown his maintenance of the laws of the 

 realm, that thev should think he would not enforce the 



