272 REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN. 



certificate or tax, to enable tliem legally to possess 

 the right anywhere; and as in my eyes it was a 

 double oifence to hold a gracious permission under 

 Her Majesty, and yet to evade the demands of lier 

 revenue, I ordered my men to be on the watch ; and 

 I resolved myself to show up the first offender that 

 came within my knowledge ; in this resolution I was 

 joined by several other gentlemen. A conviction took 

 place, and the person so convicted on that account 

 forfeited his licence ; in my opinion most deservedly. 

 I discovered it also to be a system to break dogs to 

 the young black-game in the forest, in the month of 

 Auo-ust, of course to tlie destruction of a vast many 

 from each brood ; and this also I represented. Pre- 

 viously to this, his late Royal Highness the Duke 

 of Cambridge ruled that no game should be shot in 

 the forest until the first of October, black-game and 

 partridge shooting under the old system having com- 

 menced together on the first of September. Instead 

 of the forest streams being retained for those in pos- 

 session of the royal liberty, they were not only fished 

 by the keepers and woodmen themselves, but by any 

 stranger or gipsy who could hold a rod, set a night 

 line, or dam up the water for the purposes of laving 

 and catching the fish : this neglect, I understand, 

 has also been very properly remedied. Then, as to 

 the deer, and what became of the best bucks ! Lord 

 Stuart De Kothesay was a master keeper of the 

 walk nearest me, Holmesley, and in the number of 

 years I rented under him, and dined at his table on 

 the venison his walk occasionally supplied, I never 

 saw a haunch that was from what ou2:ht to have been 

 a warrantable deer ; and in the longer period, now 

 fourteen years, that I have continued since his lord- 



