H 



DEER AND DEER PARKS. 



Ch. I. 



trace them, further than the reign of John, beyond which period the 

 Patent Rolls in which many of them are recorded do not extend ; licenses 

 from the Crown for imparking,' a source both Of profit to the sovereign, 

 and a convenient, indeed necessary,'' privilege to the subjects who could 

 afford to purchase them, are very generally found enrolled from this period, 

 arid extend to the middle of the seventeenth century. The right of having 

 a deer-leap (saltatorium)^ is Sometimes granted, and with regard to en- 

 closures in forests, in order to allow free ingress to the royal deer, a 

 reservation made as to the depth of the foss or ditch, and the height of 

 the pale or hedge, with which the ground was to be fenced : * ' To the 

 ancient economy of our Royal and Baronial Castles,' observes Whitaker,^ 

 ';,usually belonged two parks, one a park enclosed with a wall, probably for 

 fallow-deer, after the introduction of that species ; the other for red^deer, 

 fenced with a hedge and paling, or, in the words of Bracton,^ " Vallatum 

 fiiit et inclausatum fossato, haia, et pallatio." ' 



ill parcis Episc. prsedicti lOO daraos in instanti 

 pinguidinis seisona capi, saliri, siccari, et eos 

 salitos et siccatos in doleis poni, et salvo cus- 

 todiri facialis,' &c. — Dallmitay and Cartwrighfs 

 Rape of Arundel, p. 247. 



' Imparking. The 'La.tia imparcus ani parcus, 

 of the Patent Rolls, may perhaps sometimes 

 mislead. In the north of England, in Devon- 

 shire, and in Ireland, a park may mean a pad- 

 dock or small field near the town or house, 

 without any connection with deer. It is pos- 

 sible, therefore, that in some instances a simple 

 license to enclose should be understood. 



' Roger de Rannes was amerced forty marks 

 for the park which he had made without the 

 king's leave. This was in the 5th Stephen. 

 — Maddox, History of the Exchequer, i. 557. 



' Saltatorium. Saltory, or deer-leap, i.e. a 

 pit-fall ; an old and well-known contrivance for 

 taking deer, generally on the edge of a forest or 

 chase, often granted by charter, and often, too, 

 used by deer-stealers without, any right. One 

 of the Articles of Inquiry in the Court of Swain- 



mote was : ' Item, whether aiiy man have any 

 great close vnthin three miles of the forest, that 

 have any saltories or great gaps, called deer-lopes, 

 to receive deer into them, when they be in 

 chasing, and wheti they are in them they cannot 

 get out again.' An example of a chartered 

 deer-leap, still exercisihg its- privileges, is at 

 Wolseley in Staffordshire, on the edge of Can- 

 nock or Cank Chase ; and Whitaker, in his 

 ' History of Whalley,' describes a hollow in the 

 ground within the demesne of Habergham, 

 which tradition points out as a pitfall, dug for 

 impounding stray deer when the two families of 

 Townley and Habergham lived upon terms of 

 bad neighbourhood. — Whitaher's History of 

 Whalley, 4to. London, 1818, p. 276. 



■■ If a man have license to enclose any ground 

 within the forest, he may not enclose the same 

 ctim altd haid et fossato, vel cum alto pallatio. — 

 Assiz. Forest, de Lancaster, 12 Edward III. 

 Manwood, c. 10. 



° History of Whalley, p. 205, note. 



" Bracton Institutes, 2 c. 40, No. 3. 



