76 WILD WHITE CATTLE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



with the beasts they contained or with others driven in, 

 and this enclosure became a park. Thus the land, and 

 all that it contained, was secured for ever to the owner as 

 his own sole property ; no one could interfere or enter, 

 unless he chose to subject himself to such heavy 

 penalties as the law imposed ; * the beasts of chase 

 harboured undisturbed, and they were more easily kept 

 and guarded. The system that prevailed may be seen 

 from the nature of the license which Henry I. or Henry 

 II. gave with respect to Woodcote Park, at Horton in 

 Epsom. " The Abbots of Chertsey were licensed to 

 have their park here shut up whenever they would, and 

 that they might have all the beasts which they could 

 take therein." f 



The extension of such a system largely carried on 

 in every county, and most of all within the range of 

 the great forests, was sure to lead in the end to the 

 destruction of the larger beasts of chase in the forests, 

 while they were retained in the parks ; for in the forests 

 they became far less valuable and less the objects of 

 care and preservation. Except so far as they were 

 preserved in parks, all gradually disappeared, though 

 not all at once. First the wild ox, then, in England 

 (though not in Scotland) the roe-deer, then the wild 

 boar, then the fallow-deer, and lastly (with the exception 

 of a few on Exmoor, and those of the Scottish deer 

 forests specially protected by man, and indebted to his 



* By Stat. Westminster I., c. 20, " Trespassers in parks or ponds shall 

 give treble damages to the party grieved, suffer three years' imprisonment, 

 be fined at the King's pleasure, and give surety never to offend in the like 

 kind again; and if they cannot find surety they shall abjure the realm, or 

 being fugitive shall be outlawed." 



f Shirley, " Deer and Deer Parks," p. 62, quoting Manning and Bray's 

 "Surrey," vol. ii., p. 611. 



