AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 9 



the forest of Pickering was generally supposed to be 

 the Duke's favourite ground, and it is probable that 

 his hunting operations were carried on in the countries 

 where the Sinnington and Sir William Cooke's hounds 

 are now located, and that he also hunted Bilsdale 

 regularly. There is in Bilsdale a spot known as Buck- 

 ingham Stone, where a horse of the Duke's is supposed 

 to have died after a great run, and there is a local 

 tradition to the effect that stag and fox were in those 

 days hunted alternately, but Pickering Forest was dis- 

 afforested in the reign of Charles I on account of the 

 scarcity of deer, and as a matter of fact there is no 

 definite evidence as to what quarry was most hunted in 

 North-east Yorkshire until a hundred years later. 



The Goathland claim to antiquity is also exceedingly 

 vague, but it is pretty certain that hunting was carried 

 on in what is now the Goathland country more than 

 two hundred years ago, but that there was any properly 

 constituted hunt is open to great doubt, and most 

 certainly there is no authority as to the fox having been 

 the animal hunted. Nor can the Goathland show a list 

 of masters prior to Mr. Peirson, who held office in the 

 early part of the last century ; and the case with regard 

 to the Stainton Dale is very similar, no records of the 

 hunt having been kept. 



Yet it is a firmly established tradition in this hunt 

 that a royal charter was granted to it some time in 

 the Middle Ages, and the present writer remembers 

 being told (when a boy) that the charter granted them 

 the exclusive right to hunt the coast from Whitby to 

 Filey. In after years the Record Office yielded no 

 evidence on the subject, and Mr. W. Scarth Dixon has 

 suggested in the Foxhounds of Great Britain and 

 Ireland that the charter was probably a permission to 



