A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE 



used for finding game for falconers. King 

 James appears to have been devoted to every 

 kind of sport except fox hunting, for he 

 deemed it necessary for the preservation of 

 game to appoint a vermin killer to destroy all 

 foxes, etc. At Royston and at Theobalds he 

 kept cormorants for fishing, and in the State 

 papers we find entries of the appointments of 

 partridge takers, masters of hawks, masters of 

 bulls and bears, votary of birds keeper, 

 ostringers, prickers of harriers, cock masters, 

 etc., etc. 



Neither age nor illness deterred King James 

 from his favourite amusements, for we read in 

 a State paper of 1619 that ' the King re- 

 moved from Royston to Ware being carried 

 part of the way by the guard, in a portable 

 chair, and the rest in a litter ; he came next 

 day to Theobalds ; weak as he was he would 

 have the deer mustered before him.' And in 

 1624 he would leave Royston to see some 

 hawks fly at Newmarket, although it was 

 against the orders of his physicians. After 

 his death sport in Hertfordshire seems to have 

 been pursued with less ardour by Charles I. ; 

 but he was tenacious of his rights, and called 

 upon the Chief Justice of England to punish 

 severely all persons of inferior rank who 

 killed deer or other game that had escaped 

 from the royal preserves ; he also appointed 

 gamekeepers in many counties, including 

 Hertfordshire, to preserve the game (which 

 ' was much destroyed in Herts ') for his royal 

 sport. Charles II. also appointed gamekeepers 

 at Royston, and Thomas Ellyot was made 

 master of the harriers with an allowance of 

 500 a year for keeping the king's harriers. 



It is difficult to find any part of the old 

 palace at Royston remaining, and Theobalds 

 House was pulled down in 1641. Thus after 

 the death of the Stuart monarchs Hertford- 

 shire contained no royal residence, and the 

 kings and queens of England ceased to take 

 part in the sports of the county. 



The disafforesting of the royal chases and 

 sale of the deer by order of Parliament during 

 the time of the Rebellion, and the gloomy 

 spirit of fanaticism which pervaded the 

 country during the protectorate of Crom- 

 well, did much to make the years following 

 1640 a blank in the sporting annals of this 

 country ; but we gather that hunting, 

 instead of being carried on in a stately and 

 formal manner with all kinds of form and 

 ceremony in enclosed parks as in the days of 

 the Stuarts, gradually became a popular amuse- 

 ment of the nobles, landowners and yeomen 

 of the country ; the packs of hounds appear 

 to have been generally of a mixed breed, and 

 were expected to hunt all kinds of game and 



vermin. There was probably no public pack 

 of hounds kept in Hertfordshire until about 

 the year 1725, but we read of more than one 

 pack of harriers being kept by private individ- 

 uals which apparently hunted indiscriminately 

 the hart, the hare or the fox. 



There are no records at Hatfield House of 

 the times when Queen Elizabeth lived there, 

 but she is said to have spent nearly all her 

 leisure at this favourite resort in hunting and 

 other field sports. It is also curious that there 

 should be no records or bills or accounts to be 

 found amongst the papers at Hatfield relating 

 to the time when Lady Salisbury was mis- 

 tress of the foxhounds from 1793 to 1828. 



There are however some few records of 

 interest which were made by William, second 

 Earl of Salisbury, who kept in his own hand- 

 writing what we should now call a game 

 book. These papers give an accurate record 

 of all the deer killed in the two parks at 

 Hatfield, and the names of the people to 

 whom they were sent as presents. The lists 

 do not distinguish between those that were 

 killed in sport and those killed by the keepers, 

 but we have an entry that one day the earl 

 himself killed thirteen deer. We also find 

 the following in the State papers, July 26, 

 1636 : ' By that time my Lord Salisbury was 

 come in from the killing of a stagge in his 

 woods it being a goodly deer and fatt. My 

 Lord Cottington had it. Then we went to 

 see the deer called, a bow was put into my 

 Lord Cottington's hands, he shot thrice before 

 he killed, all the ladies standing by.' 



The following is a bill for the keep of the 

 pack of hounds at Hatfield in 1624 



3 qrs. of oats at zs. a bushell. 



8 live horses at 3*. 



6 dead horses at 2s. 



i bushell of bran at is. ^.d. 



6 bullocks livers at $d. 



12 doz. sheeps' feet at id. per doz. 



This same Lord Salisbury also kept a list 

 of all the deer that were in the two parks 

 at Hatfield. In 1620 there were 336, all 

 being fallow, though previously red deer had 

 been kept in one of the parks. He gave 

 particular instructions as to the necessity of 

 carefully catching the deer that he wished to 

 give away alive, so as not to ' bruise ' them. 

 He seems to have purchased in one year six 

 fallow deer from St. Jairtes's Park, ten from 

 Hyde Park and ten from Eltham Park. 



Although his predecessor had exchanged 

 Theobalds for Hatfield, the second earl 

 appears to have retained the keepership of 

 Theobalds, for we find memoranda relating to 

 the red and fallow deer in Theobalds amongst 

 the papers in the possession of Lord Salisbury 



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