LATER FOREST HISTORY 81 



Wilts. Braydon forest ; part belongs to the Exchequer and 

 part to the Duchy. 



Middlesex. The Chase of Enfield ; granted in 1687 to Lord 

 Lisburn for 50 years, with all the offices, from Master of the 

 Game to Woodwards. 



In the early part of the eighteenth century Waltham Chase, 

 Hants, was made notorious by the operations of a gang of 

 deer-stealers, who were known throughout the district by the 

 name of "Waltham Blacks," from their custom of blacking 

 their faces for their nightly forays to escape identification. 

 Like the deer stealers of Cranborne Chase, on the other side of 

 the county, of the same period, they preferred to be known by 

 the name of Hunters, and considered their actions fit to be 

 ranked among deeds of bravery. So strange was their infatua- 

 tion that, as Gilbert White tells us in his Natural History of 

 Selborne, no young person was allowed to be possessed of 

 either manhood or gallantry unless he was a " hunter." Their 

 recklessness caused them eventually to be joined by men 

 drawn from the coarser criminal classes, with the result that 

 their hunting was not infrequently accompanied by acts of 

 wanton violence. These crimes were met in 1722 by an Act of 

 extreme severity. 



Although this lawless spirit originated and came to a head at 

 Bishops Waltham, in Hampshire, more than one gang of reck- 

 less poachers and smugglers, with blackened faces, styled 

 themselves "Waltham Blacks," and traversed the country, 

 especially the forest districts, robbing deer parks and fish 

 ponds, and demanding money. They would brook no opposi- 

 tion, and shot dead a young keeper of Windsor who merely 

 put his head out of a lodge window to remonstrate. Sir John 

 Cope, of Bramshill, in the north of Hampshire, threatened two 

 men whom he thought he recognised in daylight as belonging 

 to the gang with legal proceedings, and the next night over 

 ve hundred of his young plantations were cut down. Windsor 

 suffered severely from these marauders. In the year of the 

 passing of the "Black Act " over forty of the gang were secured 

 in that district. A special assize was held at Reading, when 

 four of the worst offenders were executed and hung in chains 

 in different parts of the forest, and the others were transported. 



During the disturbed period of the Civil War, and afterwards 



