26 STAG-HUNTING ON EX MOOR. 



Kensford, which also points to royalty; and so it is 

 hardly likely that Simon the outlaw should have hung 

 about the only place where the royal authority was 

 likely to be enforced. In any case, it is not his cleanli- 

 ness but his route that is immortalised. 



In the gth year of Edward I. (1281) we find that 

 Walter Anngerin held land in Auri and Hole, in the 

 county of Devon, by sergeanty that whenever the king 

 should hunt in the Forest of Exmoor he should find 

 for him two barbed arrows ; another instance of per- 

 sonal presence of the king. Where " Auri " lies is not 

 very clear, for Oare lies in the county of Somerset and 

 Hole in the valley of the Bray. In the same reign 

 we find one Walter Barun holding lands in Holecote 

 (? Holnicote), in Somerset, by sergeanty of hanging 

 on a forked block of wood the red deer dying of mur- 

 rain in the Forest of Exmoor. 



It is not till Queen Elizabeth's time that we hear of 

 Hugh Pollard, Esquire, ranger of the royal Forest, 

 who kept a pack of hounds at Simonsbath. His suc- 

 cessors in the office continued to keep the hounds after 

 him, and at the end of the seventeenth century we find 

 Mr. Walter, of Stevenstone, in command. Mr. Walter 

 was succeeded by Lord Orford, and he in turn by Mr. 

 Dyke, who (says Dr. Collyns) hunted the country with 



