WILD CATTLE BOUND ANCIENT LONDON. 59 



Confessor : " He caused to be cut open the thick woods 

 which extended from the edge of Ciltria (the Chilterns) 

 nearly up to London, from the northern part where 

 chiefly runs the royal road called Watling Street — the 

 rough places to he smoothed, bridges to be built, and the 

 rugged roads levelled and made more safe. For at that 

 time there abounded throughout the whole of Ciltria 

 spacious woods, thick and large, the habitation of 

 numerous and various beasts, wolves, boars, forest bulls, 

 and stags." * Though the name here is the same as I 

 have quoted above — tauri sylvestres — I hesitate to attach 

 to it the same meaning ; being placed in the middle of 

 a list of wild animals, we must presume that these bulls 

 were actually wild. 



The same is, I think, true with respect to the 

 mention of the same sort of bulls [tauri sylvestres) by 

 Fitz-Stephen, who, writing about the year 1174, thus 

 describes the country immediately beyond the suburbs 

 of London : — " Close at hand lies an immense forest, 

 woody ranges, hiding-places of wild beasts, of stags, of 

 fallow deer, of boars, and of forest bulls." This 

 passage further explains the preceding one ; for this 

 was a part, now represented by Enfield Chase, of the 

 great forests of the Chiltern districts, in which the 

 Saxon chieftains, aided by some of the citizens of 

 London, long held out against the Norman conqueror, 

 under the countenance of Abbot Fretheric; and the 

 Charter of Henry I. recognises the right of the 

 citizens of London to hunt not only in Chiltern, but 

 in Middlesex and Surrey. I therefore place the 



* For much of the foregoing I am indebted to two papers by " K. T.," 

 in "Annals of Natural History:" the first, vol. iii., 1839; the second, 

 vol. iv., 2nd series, 1849. 



