282 THE RED DEER OF EXMOOR. 



their Cattle, arresting some of their persons, and maintaining many 

 long, and tedious sutes in Lawe against them, onely for their 

 claiming their just rights, and privileges, to their great losse and 

 damage. 



The petition goes on to pray for a restitution of 

 the old rights as previously enjoyed. This throws 

 a clear liorht on the wonderful chancre which had 

 taken place in the mangement of the forest, and in 

 the way in which forest rights were regarded by the 

 very men whose predecessors, in many cases their 

 direct ancestors, had extorted from the Plantagenet 

 Kings the charters of disafforestation. 



Hunting must, indeed, have been at a low ebb. 

 Dunster, Nettlecombe, Holnicote, and other places 

 where hounds might have been kept in Somerset, 

 besides the whole Devon border, were for years in 

 the hands of Cromwell's troops, who, we may safely 

 conjecture, were no respecters of game laws. 



So severely did the herds of deer suffer throughout 

 the country, that one of the earliest acts of Charles 1 1 . 

 was to decree that no one should kill a wild deer on 

 any of the royal forests for five years. This wise 

 enactment probably prevented the deer from 

 becoming extinct. 



Exmoor was granted on a lease from Lady-day, 

 1661, to James Butler, Marquis of Ormonde, for 

 thirty-one years, being part of the rewards given him 

 for his loyal adherence to the Crown, a loyalty which 

 had cost him close on a million sterling. This 

 nobleman lived mostly in Ireland, and no record 

 seems to exist as to who acted as his deputy or 



