GEORGIAN STAG-HUNTING 23 



lack of material might account for the short work made of 

 several centm'ies, and be my apology for skipping the trunk- 

 hose periods. I am further relieved from having to touch on 

 the earlier associations of royalty and stag-hunting by the 

 fact that my friend Mr. Burro w^s, who, as a descendant of 

 the hereditary Brocas Masters of the Buckhounds, is the 

 proper person to remind us of these vanished ages, has told 

 us about them in the Introduction. 



Mr. Lecky, in one of his most engaging chapters, com- 

 ments upon the fact that countless Enclosure Acts and the 

 spread of agriculture had led to much less wild stag-hunting. 

 But, on the other hand, it may be noted that these very 

 Enclosure Acts in Bucks and Berks hastened the dawn of 

 civihsation in the shape of the deer cart. Although I cannot 

 fix an Hejira with absolute certainty, the credit of this in- 

 vention belongs as much of right to George III. and his 

 hunting advisers as the credit of hunting at force — that is, of 

 unharbouring and riding to a deer with hounds — belongs of 

 right to Edward III. and his hard-riding Gascon Master, 

 Sir Bernard Brocas. I shall, therefore, without further 

 apology, begin with a short survey of Court and country 

 hunting under the Georges. 



There is really little to be said about stag-hunting under 

 George I. The Buckhounds, Mr. Hore tells us, were not 

 idle— they certainly cost money, and his pages will repay 

 the attention of those who Hke comparing expenditure 

 statistics of the past with the present. But George I., as 

 everybody knows, never settled down in England. As Dr. 

 Johnson explained to Boswell in the course of a panegyric 

 upon Charles II., he 'knew nothing, and desired to know 

 nothing ; did nothing, and desired to do nothing.' The fine 

 company on the Mall, the beauty of St. James's Park, im- 

 pressed him not at all. The oaks of Windsor only made 

 him regret the limes of Herrenhausen. He was over fifty 



