ORIGIN OF THE WOLLATON CATTLE. 275 



If, however, they are derived from one of the dissolved 

 monasteries, it is not unlikely that they may have come 

 from Newstead Priory, eight or nine miles distant, 

 whose extensive park, taken out of Sherwood Forest, 

 contained at one time 2,700 head of deer.* It was 

 granted at the dissolution to the Byrons, and there was 

 considerable connection between the two families. But 

 there is still a third source from which the wild herd of 

 Wollaton may have originated. For several hundreds 

 of years — certainly before the reign of Queen Elizabeth — 

 the Willoughbys of Wollaton have possessed, and still 

 possess, the fine mansion and park of Middleton Hall, 

 from which they take their title. This place is at the 

 extreme northern edge of the county of Warwick, close 

 to the boundary line between it and Staffordshire. For- 

 merly Cannock Chase came quite up to Middleton, and 

 Needwood Forest was only a few miles distant. At 

 Middleton, therefore, the Willoughbys, when they 

 resided there, were not far from Chartley itself, and 

 still nearer to the forests from which the Chartley cattle 

 were obtained. 



The Wollaton Hall herd forms, with those at Chart- 

 ley, at Somerford, and at Lyme, the southernmost group 

 of the ancient white cattle ; and all these herds may be 

 said to have been* in tolerably close proximity. Somer- 

 ford and Lyme lie in a westerly and north-westerly 

 direction, little more than fifty miles from Wollaton in 

 a straight line ; the whole country between them being 

 anciently a wonderful congeries of extensive forests, 

 moors, and hills — the favourite haunts of Robin Hood 

 and his associates. To the south-west of Wollaton lies 

 Chartley, less than thirty-five miles distant. But mere 



* Thoresby's " Thoroton," vol. ii., p. 289. 

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