A HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX 



' keeping and using dogs for coursing, nets, 

 ferrets, and dogs for chasing by scent,' and, 

 ' in company with others, breaking into the free 

 warren of the earl of Darbie at Hillington, 

 county Middlesex, and hunting the rabbits of 

 the said earl.' 66 The other case, dated 

 29 December 1613, records the acceptance 

 of recognizances of the total value of 60 

 from 'Alexander Cottrell of London, mer- 

 chant taylor," and two others for his ap- 

 pearance at the next sessions of the peace 

 ' to answer for breaking into my Lord of 

 London's grounds at Fulham within his moat 

 nere his dwelling house there to kill and take 

 his conies.' 67 It is rather curious that these 

 two cases, and that with respect to Hampton 

 Court during the Interregnum already men- 

 tioned, 68 are the only three that deal with 

 rabbits in the whole series. 



Not less notable is the entire absence of 

 any cases relating to deer-stealing or poaching 

 in the Middlesex County Records throughout 

 the reigns of Charles II and his brother 

 James. This may perhaps in a measure be 

 accounted for by the very large number of 

 cases with respect to treason, recusancy, and 

 non-attendance at public worship that these 

 records contain, which can have left the 

 justices little leisure for dealing with offences 

 of any other description. It is also, doubtless, 

 partly due to the fact that with the exception 

 of ' the sons or heirs apparent of an esquire 

 or other person of higher degree, and the 

 owners or keepers of forests, parks, chases, or 

 warrens, being stocked with deer or conies 

 for their necessary use ' it was illegal for any 

 person ' to have or keep for himself or any 

 other person any guns, bows, greyhounds, 

 setting dogs, ferrets, nets, gins, snares, or any 

 other engines for the taking of game,' unless 

 he was possessed of landed property of the 

 clear yearly value of ^100 a year, or leases for 

 ninety-nine years or more of the clear yearly 

 value of ^150 a year. 69 At the close of the 

 seventeenth century all the royal parks of 

 Middlesex, with the exception of the two in 

 Hampton Court Honour and Hyde Park, 

 which had ceased to be used for hunting, had, 



*> MM. Co. Rec. i, 67. 



"'Ibid, ii, 176. * Ante. 



68 22 & 23 Chas. II, cap. 25 3. Cf. Stephen's 

 Commentaries, iv, 577, and Thornhill's Sporting 

 Directory, 131, where there is an elaborate exam- 

 ination of the meaning of the term ' esquire.' 



as has been shown, been disparked. During 

 the next hundred years the bulk of the manors 

 to which the right of free warren had 

 attached began one by one to disappear before 

 the advance of London, and in spite of the 

 Game Laws, which continued in force till 

 the reign of William IV, the area available 

 for sport became gradually restricted to the 

 northern portions of the county. Its im- 

 pending disappearance in the first quarter 

 of the nineteenth century is indicated by the 

 Reminiscences of a Huntsman by the Hon. 

 George Grantley Berkeley, who, with his 

 brother Moreton, preserved the game at the 

 family seat at Cranford during the years 

 182436. 'For the size of the covers and 

 estate,' he says 



no place had such a stock of pheasants and hares. 

 It is but i ,000 acres in all, on the outside of which 

 Brentford, Isleworth, Twickenham and indeed 

 London furnished a certified set of marauders to 

 destroy all living things that did not return home 

 to our covers before i September. At break of 

 day on i September for an hour there was a 

 running fire, indeed, 

 ' A squadron's charge each tenant's heart dismayed, 



On every cover fired a bold brigade." 

 To remedy this evil, we drove the outskirts in so 

 soon as the gathering of the corn would permit 

 us ; and the I September I always went forth and 

 began to bag every hare and partridge I could get 

 near at break of day. 70 



According to a parliamentary return of the 

 number of convictions under the Game 

 Laws in separate counties of England and 

 Wales for the year 1869 issued on 7 March 

 1870, which appears to be the last published 

 on the subject, 131 out of a total of 10,335 

 were in Middlesex, as against 90 in Surrey, 

 260 in Kent, 302 in Herts, and 310 in 

 Essex. 71 Of these 131 convictions, however, 

 only four were for night poaching and the 

 remaining 127 for trespassing in the day time 

 in pursuit of game ; and this total must 

 therefore presumably be regarded rather as a 

 criterion of the number and audacity of the 

 poaching fraternity in London and the suburbs 

 than of the extent of preservation or the 

 supply of game. 



70 Hon. G. C. Grantley Berkeley, Reminiscences of 

 a Huntsman (new ed. 1897), II. The first edition 

 was published in 1854. 



71 Accounts and Papers (1870), Ivii, 105. 



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