Ch. III. 



HER TFORDSHIRE. 



79 



HER TFORDSHIRE. 



Three Hertfordshire parks are found 

 recorded in tKe great Domesday Survey — 

 at St. Albans, Ware, and Belintone. , 



The park at St. Albans is described as 

 'parous bestiarum silvaticarum,' and it 

 belonged to the great Abbey at that place. 

 The park at Ware is described in the same 

 words, it was the property of Hugh de 

 Grentemaisnil ; a park is marked at Ware 

 in all the ancient maps. Belintone, the 

 modern Benington, belonged to Peter de 

 Valongies ; its park of ' wood or wild 

 beasts ' also occurs in the older maps of 

 the county; in the time of James I. it 

 belonged to Robert Devereux, third Earl 

 of Essex, who sold his hunting-house here 

 with a large park of deer to Sir Julius 

 Caesar, knt., Master of the Rolls in the 

 year. 1615.' 



' This shire at this day,' writes Norden 

 in his description of Hertfordshire in 1596, 

 ' is, and hath beene more heretofore, much 

 repleat with parkes, woodes, and rivers.' 

 The principal parks marked in his survey, 

 and that of Saxton, are as follows, — at 

 Hatfield, near the centre of the county, 

 where Robert first Earl of Salisbury made 

 two large parks, one for fallow, the other 

 for red deer, which were united by the 

 late Marquis of Salisbury. The present 

 park contains 314 acres of land, with a 



' Life of Sir Julius Csesar : London, 1827, 



P- 32- 



'^ At the distance of every mile there was 

 fixed in the wall a square stone, with the date 

 of the year and the number of miles. One of 

 these, with the figure viii. and the date 1 62 1, 



herd of 360 fallow-deer. In the immediate 

 neighbourhood were the parks of Wood- 

 hall, Brockethall, Tittenhanger, Shenley, 

 Bedwell, and Punsburne. To the east 

 Cheshunt and Theobalds; the latter, not 

 marked as a park in Saxton's Survey, was 

 the well-known favourite residence of King 

 James L, who enclosed the park with a 

 brick wall about ten miles in compass.* 

 By a survey taken in 1650, before the de- 

 struction of the palace here, Theobalds 

 Park contained 2,508 acres ; valued, to- 

 gether with six lodges, at 1,545/. 15J. ifd. 

 per annum ; the deer were valued at 1,000/. ; 

 the rabbits at 15/.; the timber at 7,259/, ex- 

 clusive of 15,608 trees marked for the use 

 of the navy, and others already cut down 

 for that purpose. The park contained ah 

 avenue of a mile long, between a double 

 row of trees. In the gallery of this beau- 

 tiful palace, 1 20 feet by 2 1 , were ' divers large 

 stagges heads sett round the same, and 

 fastened to the sayd roome, which are an 

 excellent ornament to the same." It was 

 in this park that Henry Cary Lord 

 Falkland lost his life in September 1633, 

 by breaking his leg with a fall out of a 

 ' standing,' being there hunting with the 

 king, ' and his leg gangrening was cut off, 

 and his lordship the next day died.'* 



The park at Cashiobury in the south- 

 still remains in a part of the old wall which 

 forms the boundary of Mr. Russel's garden at 

 hVonry.— Lysoti's Environs, vol. ii. p. 776, 

 note. 



' Lyson's Environs, vol. ii. p. 770. 



* S. P. O. Domestic, Sept. 27, 1633. 



