EXTINCT BRITISH QUADRUPEDS. 283 
spear him, or dismount and despatch him, single-handed, with a 
sword. The latter feat, when successfully accomplished, of course 
brought the greatest credit to the huntsman. 
There is a curious story recorded in connection with a Boar- 
hunt which took place in Yorkshire in the time of Henry II. It 
appears that three gentlemen, whose names are given, William de 
Bruce, Ralph de Percy, and a freeholder in the neighbourhood of 
Whitby, named Allotson, met on the 16th October, 1159, to hunt 
the Wild Boar in a certain wood called Eskdale-side, belonging 
to the Abbot of Whitby. After a bit their hounds found an old 
Boar, which they hunted for some time, and ran him very hard 
towards a chapel and hermitage tenanted by a solitary monk 
of Whitby, who was a hermit. The Boar, being hard pressed, 
took in at the chapel door, laid him down, and there died. The 
hermit, being a humane man, shut the door to keep out the 
hounds, and went on with his meditations. Presently the hunts- 
men arrived, and, finding the hounds checked, made a cast right 
and left to recover the scent, never dreaming that the Boar was 
in the chapel; but the hounds, persistently refusing to leave the 
door, they broke it in, and, to their astonishment, there lay the 
Boar dead. The story goes that, being very angry at their hounds 
being checked, they went at the hermit with their Boar-spears, 
and wounded him so seriously that a few weeks afterwards he 
died. In the meantime the affair came to the ears of the Abbot 
of Whitby, who, being in great favour with the king, refused 
to allow them to take sanctuary at Scarborough, whither they had 
fled on hearing how the matter was likely to end. Having lost 
their privilege of sanctuary, they were liable to the extreme 
penalty of the law. Fortunately, however, the hermit interceded 
with the Abbot in their behalf, and a pardon was obtained on 
condition of their performing a certain penance, which was then 
and there enjoined them. 
Boar-hunting was at one time such a matter of every-day 
occurrence, that those who participated in it, or witnessed it, 
seldom took the trouble to preserve any record of their sport, 
except when, in a case like that just mentioned, some unusual 
circumstance occurred to make the day memorable. But in the 
old Household Books, which were kept by the stewards of noble- 
men and gentlemen of position, we frequently find entries of 
payments made in connection with the sport, often in the shape 
