Book I.] THE LORDS OF THE MANOR. 43 



England), at the battle of Lewes, May 14, 1264, and having 

 defeated the royalists and taken the king prisoner, he was 

 elected by them one of the nine counsellors to assume the 

 government of the kingdom. The barons being, however, 

 defeated at the subsequent battle of Evesham, August 4, 



as such in his native country ; but St. Denis and some others were also 

 looked upon, and interceded to, by sportsmen in a Hke capacity. In 

 England, before the Norman Conquest, several Anglo-Saxon saints were 

 worshipped and supplicated by sportsmen in those days, when their 

 intercession was deemed necessary for the due success of any venatic 

 undertaking. But as these local patron saints of the chase in course of 

 time became unfashionable, or forgotten, or supplanted by others, as the 

 case may be, we will not further refer to them, but mention a few of their 

 successors in more recent times. Thomas a Becket (who was a mighty 

 hunter in his lifetime) was undoubtedly looked upon by our sporting pre- 

 decessors during the Plantagenet era as the patron saint of the chase /«r 

 excellence. If any one had a sick hawk or hound which did not recover 

 under ordinary human remedies, he forthwith made a wax model of the 

 animal, and despatched it to the shrine of the saint at Canterbury, where 

 it was solemnly offered, the result, of course, being a miraculous cure. 

 This procedure became so common and necessary, that we find an officer 

 attached to the royal hunting establishment in those days, whose principal 

 duty it was to attend to such matters. Sometimes the wax model was 

 sent to the shrine of St. Thomas of Hereford, who was also a patron saint 

 of the chase. Perhaps the most extraordinary- of all was Simon de Mont- 

 fort, the celebrated Earl of Leicester, who, although not canonized, was 

 looked upon as a saint from the time of Edward I. until about the accession 

 of Richard II., when, for some reason or other, he became unfashionable 

 with English sportsmen, and ceased to be supplicated. Nevertheless, 

 he was once in great favour with sportsmen, and a list of the miracles 

 accomplished by his intercession on hawks, hounds, horses, etc., is pre- 

 served in the Cottonian MS. in the British Museum — the cures effected 

 being vouched for by numerous witnesses of undoubted veracity. Apart 

 from the supernatural attributes of the patron saint of the chase, we may 

 mention, in conclusion, that Simon de Montfort was famous as a hunts- 

 man. So devoted was he to the pleasures of the chase, that his seal 

 depicts him mounted on his hunter in full gallop, winding his horn, cheer- 

 ing on his foxhounds, which are represented in full crj'. This seal of the 

 great patriotic baron is attached to a deed dated 1259, preserved in the 

 royal archives at Paris. The example we believe to be unique, as in 

 those days it was the custom of knights and nobles, kings and princes, to 

 be represented on their seals armed cap-a-pie. But " the founder of the 

 House of Commons," as he is sometimes termed, preferred to appear on his 

 seal in the costume of Diana rather than the uniform of Mars ; and, as 

 he was the M.F.H. of Warwickshire and Leicestershire over six hundred 

 years ago, the seal gives us, in miniature, the oldest picture of foxhunting 

 in England now extant. 



