Ch. I. SINCE THE NORMAN' CONQUEST. ii 



The privilege of taking vermin in the royal forests appears to have 

 been also the subject of royal grants; thus John de Beverle in the forty- 

 second of Edward III., and the heirs male of his body, was licensed to 

 take all kinds of vermin with dogs in the forests, chases, parks, and warrens 

 of the king, and to hunt hares, and to use a certain horn of divers colours, 

 viz. russet and black, which the king had given to him as a sign.* 



Mr. Earle in his recent edition of the Saxon Chronicle, has well described 

 the hunting of these early times: — ' Now-a-days,' he says, 'men hunt for 

 exercise and sport, but then they hunted for food, or for the luxury of 

 fresh meat. Now the flight of the beast is the condition of a good hunt, 

 but in those days it entailed disappointment. They had neither the means 

 of giving chase or of killing at a distance, so they used stratagem -to bring 

 the game within the reach of their missiles. A labyrinth of alleys was 

 penned out at a convenient part of the wood, and here the archers lay 

 under covert. The hunt began by sending men round to break and beat 

 the wood, and drive the game with dogs and horns into the ambuscade. 

 This pen is the kaia so frequently occurring among the silvm of Domes- 

 day. Horns were used, not, as with us, to call the dogs, or, asin France, 

 to signal the stray sportsman ; but to scare the game. In fact, it was the 

 battue, which is now, under altered circumstances, discountenanced by the 

 authorities of the chase, but which in early times was the only way for 

 man to cope with the beasts of the field.' 



Of the thirty-one parks mentioned in Domesday, eight belonged to the 

 king ; these were in the counties of Surrey and Sussex, Hampshire, Devon- 

 shire, Buckinghamshire, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, and Shropshire. The 

 Bishop of Baieux had three parks, all in Kent ; the Bishop of Winchester 

 one at Waltham (afterwards called Bishop's Waltham), in Hampshire ; the 

 church of Pershore one in Worcestershire ; and the church of St. Albans 

 another near that place> in the county of Hertford. The Earl of Ow had 



* Patent Rolls, 42 Edward III. 



