HISTORY AND LITERATURE. 31 



high revels according to the ' Druid ' in a house which has long 

 since disappeared, but whose site he marked under the shadow 

 of some noble Hmes hard by that where Cotterill, the present 

 keeper of the paddocks, lives, as his family lived for many 

 generations before him. There is a record of a wonderful 

 run in the time of the second Charles from that place to 

 Lord Petre's in Essex, a distance of seventy miles, the Duke 

 of York being one of the few who saw the deer pulled down. 

 The indefatigable ' Druid' has unearthed too another big affair, 

 from Aldermaston to Reading in the days of ' Good King 

 George.' On this occasion both his Majesty's horses were done 

 'to a turn,' and their rider had to make his way back to 

 Windsor in a butcher's cart, chatting affably to the driver on 

 crops, stock, and other such congenial topics. The present 

 fashion of stag-hunting seems to have been first practised 

 in this reign, and to suit King George's sober pace the custom 

 of stopping the hounds seems also to have been inau- 

 gurated. According to Blaine the meet was then a much more 

 imposing affair than it now is. The King himself was almost 

 always present, attended by his master of the horse and the 

 equerries-in-waiting. The servants of the hunt wore the 

 familiar scarlet and gold-laced liveries then as now, but the 

 master's coat was light blue, with collars and cuffs of black 

 velvet, the costume also of his Majesty, who, moreover, if a story 

 told by the ' Druid ' on the authority of the late Bill Bean, of 

 hard riding and facetious memory, be true, never took the field 

 without a star on his breast. ^ There was always a great show of 

 carriages and foot-people, and apparently rather more blowing 

 of horns than would chime with modern notions. The Fourth 

 George patronised the stag but rarely, either as prince or king, 

 though he kept up the hunt in great splendour, and penned 

 with his own hand a most courtly note to Charles Davis on his 

 appointment as huntsman, hoping that he would get the hounds 



1 The late Prince Consort (Albert) always wore the ribbon under his waist- 

 coat out shooting. The Editor has often shot with him, and invariably seen 

 ii on him. 



