82 THE ROYAL FORESTS OF ENGLAND 



during the Commonwealth, deer-hunting by unauthorised 

 persons became customary on Cranborne Chase, and was sub- 

 sequently indulged in by many of the gentlemen of the neigh- 

 bourhood as a kind of " brave diversion." In the earlier part 

 of the eighteenth century, not a few persons of good breeding 

 and birth thought it no disgrace to hunt or poach at night, to 

 drive the deer into nets, and to enter into fierce combats with 

 the keepers. Hutchins thus describes this "kind of knight- 

 errantry amusement of the most substantial gentlemen of the 

 neighbourhood " : 



" The manner of this amusement, as it was then called, was nearly 

 as follows : A company of hunters, from four to twenty in number, 

 assembled in the evening, dressed in cap, jack, and quarterstaff, and 

 with dog's and nets. Having set the watchword for the night, and 

 agreed whether to stand or run, in case they should meet the keepers, 

 they proceed to Cranborne Chase, set their nets at such places where 

 the deer are most likely to run, then let slip their dogs, well-used to 

 the sport, to drive the deer into the nets, a man standing at each 

 end to strangle the deer as soon as entangled. Thus they passed 

 such a portion of the night as their success induced them, sometimes 

 bringing off six or eight deer, good or bad, such as fell into the net, 

 but generally of the latter sort, which was a matter of little import- 

 ance to those gentlemen hunters who regarded the sport, not the 

 venison. Frequent desperate bloody battles took place ; and in- 

 stances have unfortunately happened where sometimes keepers, at 

 other times hunters, have been killed. " 



A reproduction is given on the opposite page of an original 

 painting, executed in 1720, of a group of these hunters with 

 their bee-hive caps, wadded coats, quarterstaffs, and nets. 

 The person in the centre is Mr. Henry Good, of Bower Chalk, 

 described as a man " of rare endowments both of body and 

 mind." It appears as a frontispiece to that rare book Mr. 

 Chafin's Anecdotes of Cranborne Chase (1818), where the special 

 details of the deer-hunter's equipment are thus described : 



"The cap was formed with wreaths of straw tightly bound 

 together with split bramble-stalks, the workmanship much the same 

 as that of the common bee-hives. The jacks were made of the 

 strongest canvas, well quilted with wool to guard against the heavy 

 blows of the quarterstaff, weapons which were much used in those 

 days, and the management of them requiring great dexterity." 



