250 HISTOKY OF THE EOYAL BUCKHOUNDS AND ASCOT EACES. 



Richmond Park, as the case may be, to the rendezvous where 

 the Royal Buckhounds assembled for the chase, which was 

 usually in Windsor Forest. That procedure invariably pre- 

 vailed during the life of the Prince Consort. " There is a 

 noble oak," writes Miss Strickland, " among the glades of 

 Windsor Forest which used to have a brass plate affixed to it, 

 intimating that it was called ' Queen Anne's Oak ' ; for beneath 

 its branches she was accustomed to mount her horse for the 

 chase, and view her officials and dogs assembled for the hunt." 

 Towards the end of her reign the gout and other complaints, 

 which she had held at bay by frugal fare and active exercise, 

 gradually made undeniable assaults on her usually robust con- 

 stitution, and with the greatest reluctance she was eventually 

 compelled to give up riding to her hounds. Nevertheless she 

 continued to follow them up to the last in her hunting calash. 

 There is a tradition to the effect that, in anticipation of her 

 favourite Buckhounds falling into disrepute on the score of the 

 expenses incidental to the pack, she set aside a fund, sufficient 

 for their future maintenance, independent of any grant from 

 the Civil List or demand on the Royal Exchequer. To what 

 extent the validity of that fund proceeded it is now apparently 

 impossible to ascertain. A version once obtained currency 

 that this huntinsr endowment should have been reserved out 

 of the money she allocated to the Established Church, known 

 as " Queen Anne's Bounty." At any rate, it was worked out 

 on the simile of robbing Peter to pay Paul, or, to be precise, 

 of mulcting that patient beast of burden, the British tax- 

 payer, for the benefit of " the scantily endowed clergy of the 

 Established Church " — this " bounty " money having been 

 allocated towards the expenses of the Royal Household from 

 the time of the " Reformation " down to the year 1703, and 

 from thence onward to our own times the taxpayers have 

 been obliged to make the deficiency good. 



Like Elizabeth, Anne lived in the hearts of her subjects. 

 Apart from her individual predilection for the chase, she seems 

 to have acted on the principle recorded by the old chronicler, 

 that among " common people " (that is, the citizens and gentry 



