38 DEER AND DEER PARKS. Ch. II. 



Buck-hunting in parks appears to have beeri the most fashionable' 

 disport of the Elizabethan period. The forests> and their primeval in- 

 habitants the red-deer, had been much reduced; the nobility, that is, 

 archbishop, bishop, earl or baron, coming to the court at the summons 

 of the sovereign, and passing by the forests, could no longer easily 

 exercise their privilege, as they were empowered by tlie old charter of 

 King Henry III., of ' kiUing one or two of our deer by view of our Forester, 

 'f he be present ; or else he shall cause one to blow an Horn for him, sd 

 that he seem not to steal our Deer.' ' Those days were gone, but in their 

 place every gentleman could ' enjoy his own hunting in his own grounds,' 

 as it had been in pre-Norman times, and many, it must be confessed, did 

 little or nothing else. Thus of Henry Lord Berkeley it is recorded that 

 in the month of July in the first year of Elizabeth (1559), ' He came with 

 his Wife and Family to Callowden his house by Coventry, when the first 

 work done, was the sending for his buckhounds to Yate in Gloucester- 

 shire ; his hounds being come, away goethe he and his wife a progress of 

 buck-hunting to the Parks of Berkswell, Groby, Bradgate, Leicester Forestj 

 Tiley and others on this side his house ; and after a small repose, then the 

 parks of Kenelworth, Astley, Wedgnock and others, on the other side of 

 his house, and this was the course of this Lord, more or less, for the thirty 

 next summers at least.' * 



Queen Elizabeth inherited from her father a taste for these silvan sports, 

 and her ' progresses ' afford us many pleasant glimpses of her enjoyment of 

 them. The following incident, which took place in 1 5 74, relates also to Henry 

 Lord Berkeley, and proves her resemblance to her father in other and more 

 dangerous characteristics: — 'Queen Elizabeth in her progress, in the isth 

 year of her reigne, came to Berkeley Castle, what time this Lord Henry 

 had a stately game of red-deer in the park adjoining, called " The Worthy " 

 whereof Henry Ligon was keeper, during which time of her being there, 



' Charter of the Forest, 9 H. III. cap. xi. 2 Smyth's Lives of the Berkeleys, 1821, p. 



