is ikims ot tbe 1l3untiug*3fielb 



indeed, and history and legend have combined to invest it 

 with gloomy but romantic interest. There still clings to 

 it the stain of the foul murder of the second Edward by 

 the 



'She-wolf of France, with unrelenting fangs 

 That tore the bowels of her mangled mate : 



the dark deed which Gray's prophetic ' Bard ' thus pre- 

 figured to the Conqueror of Wales. 



' Weave the warp and weave the woof, 

 The winding sheet of Edward's race, 



Give ample room and verge enough 

 The characters of hell to trace. 

 Mark the year and mark the night, 

 When Severn shall re-echo with affright 

 The shrieks of death thro' Berkeley's roofs that ring, 

 Shrieks of an agonising king.' 



Right valiantly was Berkeley Castle held in later days 

 for the king, and when its garrison of 500 men, starved 

 into surrender, marched out at last with all the honours 

 of war, the Roundheads were glad enough to see their 

 backs. Grantley Berkeley tells us how mad it used to 

 make him, as a boy, to look at the grand old hall de- 

 nuded of all its suits of armour, its trophies of war and 

 the Chase, which ' the crop-eared knaves ' had carried off 

 as the spoils of their hard-earned victory over the 

 stubborn defenders. 



The Berkeleys were ever a race of sportsmen, and I 

 have seen a vague statement to the effect that a Lord 

 Berkeley ' kept thirty huntsmen in tawny coats,' and a 

 pack of hounds, ' at the village of Charing,' with which 

 he hunted the country round. It has been assumed 

 that this village must have been where Charing Cross 

 now stands, and that consequently there were Berkeley 

 hounds in existence at some distant period, before 

 London had linked itself to Westminster, as far back as 



