NEED WOOD FOREST. 51 



The name Houndliill was originally Howenlmll. Hol- 

 lingshead gives the following fact concerning it : — 



Egelred, being greatly advanced, as he thought, by reason of the marriage, 

 devised upon presumption thereof, to cause all the Danes within tlie land to be 

 murdered in one day. Hereupon, he sent privie commissioners into all cities, 

 boroughs, and towns within his dominions, commanding the rulers and officers in 

 tlie same to dispatch and flee all such Danes as remained within their liberties 

 at a certain day prefixed, being St. Ryce's daj'^, in the year 1012, and in the 

 thirty-fourth year of King Egelred's raigue (the 12th of November). Hereupon, as 

 sundry writers agree, in one day and hour this murther beganne, and, according 

 to the commissions and instructions, executed. But where it first beganne, the 

 same is uncertain ; some say at Wellowyn in Hereforth, some at a place in 

 Staifordshire called Hown Hill, etc.* 



There were certain curious old customs connected with 

 the Forest, which, though well known to every one living 

 in the neighbourhood, may not be so to others. One of 

 these was the Tutbury bull-running, which was inaugurated 

 by John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, w^ho was lord of 

 Tutbury Castle, and the lands adjoining it. Mr. Hugh 

 Bennett, in Longmans Magazine, says : " It was connected 

 with the holdinoj of an annual court of minstrels at Tut- 

 bury, at which the king of the minstrels and other officers 

 for the ensuing year were chosen. After service in the 

 parish church, and a feast in the Castle hall, the bull was 

 turned out by the prior, at the Abbey gate, for the diversion 

 of the minstrels. Solemn proclamation was made by the 

 steward that ' all manner of persons give way to the bull, 

 none being to come near to him by forty feet, or any 

 way to hinder the minstrels, but to attend his or their 

 own safties, every one at his peril.' Then the bull, having 

 ' his horns cut off, his ears cropt, his tail cut off by the 

 stumple, all his body smeared over with soap, and his 

 nose blown full of beaten pepper — in short, being made 

 as mad as possible,' was turned loose to the minstrels to 

 be taken by them, and none others, within the county of 

 Staflford, before the setting of the sun the same day. If 

 they failed to do this, and the bull escaped over the river 

 into Derbyshire, the minstrels lost him ; but if they could 



* Eedfem'a " History and Autiquitiea of Uttoxeter." 



