FORMATION OF PARKS. 75 



parts of the North of England. And as population 

 increased, and the great forests every day diminished 

 during the Plantagenet reigns, it became, like the wolf 

 and the wild boar, and eventually the roe-deer, as a wild 

 animal extinct in England. In a few favoured spots 

 protected by some powerful lord, spiritual or temporal, a 

 few herds may have held their ground somewhat longer, 

 but very few I think after the death of Richard II., in 

 the year 1400. In Scotland the wild cattle continued 

 in a perfectly wild state much longer in some parts ; 

 but in other parts perhaps even in Scotland, and 

 certainly generally in England, they ceased to be beasts 

 of the forest at even an earlier date than the above. 

 The cause is very apparent, and is the same as that 

 which eventually led to the extinction in a perfectly 

 wild state of most of the larger beasts of chase. The 

 forest was gradually superseded by the park. Even 

 kings and nobles found that in spite of their stringent 

 forest laws, as time went on and population grew and 

 increased, game diminished. The forests were invaded 

 by the ever-multiplying claims of adjoining freeholders, 

 and the game, if not destroyed, as was sometimes the 

 case, was everywhere much disturbed. * The wild 

 animals were obliged to retire before a growing civilisa- 

 tion. Oar princes and great men soon saw how to 

 meet the case. With the permission of the Sovereign, 

 which was very liberally granted, they enclosed within 

 a pale, hay (hedge), or wall, large ranges of the forest, 



* As an instance of this it may be mentioned that Hatfield Chase, in 

 South Yorkshire, contained, in 1607, 70,000 acres and 1,000 head of red 

 deer ; but that " the herd was much impaired by the depredations of the 

 bord&rers." (Shirley, " Deer and Deer Parks," p. 217.) The same thing 

 happened, to my knowledge, to the fallow-deer of Sherwood Forest, of which 

 one of my mother's family was the last verderer. 



