IN DEVON AND SOMERSET 215 



CHAPTER III 



IN DEVON AND SOMERSET 



THE stag-hunting of which we have records in the 

 West-country does not seem to have ever had very 

 much in common with that which I have attempted 

 to describe in the previous chapters. Probably the 

 civil war took all restraints off poaching, and dispersed ' 

 many a pack of hounds : moreover, after the confisca- 

 tions that followed, the landed gentry could not afford 

 to keep up hunting establishments on the scale that 

 prevailed in France. Hunting, besides, is a much 

 simpler affair in open country than it is in forests, 



1 The Windsor pack, however, was kept up. See White- 

 locke's Memorials for 1649 : ' August 22nd. I sent out my 

 keepers into Windsor Forest to harbour a stag to be hunted to- 

 morrow morning : but I persuaded Colonel Ludlow that it would 

 be hard to shew him any sport, the best stags being all destroyed, 

 but he was very earnest to have some sport, and I thought not 

 fit to deny him. August 23rd. My keepers did harbour a stag. 

 Colonel Ludlow, Mr. Oldesworth, and other gentlemen met me 

 by daybreak. It was a young stag, but very lusty and in good 

 case. The first ring which the stag had led the Gallants was 

 above twenty miles.' 



