APPENDIX 215 



wolf, fox, marten, otter, badger, and coney no difference 

 was made — it was called grease ; and in one sense this 

 general term was also used for deer: "a deer of high 

 grease," or " a hart in the pride of grease," were phrases 

 used for the season of the year when the stag and the 

 buck were fattest {see Appendix : Seasons of Hunting). 



GREASE TIME, not Grace Time or Grass Thrie, as 

 Strutt and others have it. It did not include the whole 

 season when the hart or buck could be killed, but meant 

 to indicate the time when they were fat and fittest for 

 killing. As pointed out already by Dryden (p. 25), the 

 Excerpta Historica (Lond. 1831) contains an interesting 

 example of the use of this word. This is a letter written 

 (p. 356) about 1480 by Thomas Stonor, Steward of the 

 Manor of Thame. He was in Fleet Prison at the time 

 he writes to his brother in the country concerning some 

 property of his own in his brother's neighbourhood. " No 

 more to you^ at thys tyme but . . . more ov^ I entende 

 to kepe my gresse tyme in yat countre, where fore I woU^ 

 yat no man^ huntte tyll^ I have bene then" 



In the privy-purse expenses of Henry VIII. (1532) is 

 an entry of a payment for attendance on the king during 

 the \d.stgrece-time. Cavendish in his Life of Wolsey says : 

 "My lord continued at Southwell until the latter end of 

 grease time.'^ Both these passages refer to the month of 

 June. In the laws of Howel the Good, King of Wales, 

 a fine of 12 kine was imposed on whoever kills a hart in 

 grease time {kylleic) of the kings. 



Confusion arose occasionally owing to the similarity of 

 the words as formerly spelt, grass being sometimes spelt 

 " grysse " (Dryden, p. 25). Manwood, also, misinterprets 

 Grease time. In the agreement between the Earl of 

 Winchester and the Baron of Dudley of 1247, ^^ which 

 their respective rights of hunting in Charnwood Forest 

 and Bradgate Park, Leicestershire, were defined, and which 

 agreement Shirley has given (in a translation) in his 

 " English Deer Parks," the time of the fallow buck season 



