274 WILD WHITE CATTLE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



Hag of Beskwood," as it was called, was " enclosed 

 with a pale," and contained a royal residence,* where 

 Edward III. certainly came for the purpose of hunting. 

 It was of great extent, and contained every variety 

 of game. The two Sir Richard Willoughbys, father 

 and son, who were the " great advancers " of this 

 family, lived in the reigns of Edward II. and III., 

 and the son was a judge of high repute, and " some- 

 times Chief Justice when Galfridus le Scrope, the 

 Chief Justice, was gone on the King's business beyond 

 the seas." About the same time, more than one 

 of the family of Willoughby in succession were the 

 Eoyal Foresters in Beskwood Park ; and to this period 

 of roval favour I should be inclined to assign the intro- 

 duction of the wild cattle to Wollaton, either from 

 Beskwood Park or from the forest which surrounded it. 



stocked with red deer. But now it is parcelled into little closes on one 

 side, and much of it hath been plowed, so that there is scarce either wood 

 or venison : which is too likely to be the fate of the whole Forest of 

 Shirewood." Beskwood was bestowed by Charles II. upon his son by 

 Nell Gwynne, created Duke of St. Albans, in whose family it still 

 remains ; and, except just in the purlieus of the dukeries, the glories of 

 Sherwood are altogether gone, as Dr. Thoroton so mournfully anti- 

 cipated. Old men, not many years dead, remembered its last relic — 

 Thorneywood Chase — and the fallow deer crossing the enclosed farms 

 within the boundaries of the forest as they went down to water, quite 

 undisturbed unless they got beyond its ancient limits, in which cr.se the 

 deer-stealers often shot them down. Even up to the close of the last 

 century the Nottinghamshire nursemaids sang to their young charges the 

 old ballads of Kobin Hood, which they learnt in their cottage homes. 

 But now " Merrie Shirewood " is a thing only of the past ; and in the year 

 1848 died its last verderer, one of my mother's family, the Wyldes of 

 Nettleworth, who had for generations supplied one . of the four ancient 

 officers, who bore that name, and took care of that right royal forest, 

 its vert, and its venison. 



* Edward III., in the third year of his reign, issued several letters 

 patent from this place. See Thoroton's "Nottinghamshire:" article, 

 " Beskwood Parke." 



