Ch. VI. 



OXFORDSHIRE. 



135 



keeper of the king's horses in his park at 

 Cornbury during pleasure.' 



At the same period Joan, widow of 

 Thomas de Musgrave, held certain lands 

 in Blechingdon by the service of carrying 

 one shield of brawn, price twopence-half- 

 penny, to the king whenever he should 

 hunt in this park of Cornbury, it being 

 understood that one shield of brawn so 

 carried to the king on his first day of 

 hunting should suffice during the whole 

 of his stay at his manor of Woodstock.* 



Cornbury remained in the Crown till 

 after the Restoration, when it was granted 

 by Charles 11. to the great Lord Chan- 

 cellor Clarendon, who took his second title 

 of Viscount Cornbury from this beautiful 

 park and place. Plot, in his ' Histoiy of 

 Oxfordshire,' makes some remarks upon 

 the deer in this park having dwarf and 

 irregular heads, the result, as he contends, 

 of a part of it having been turned into a 

 coney warren before the Restoration ; 

 'but as soon,' he adds, 'as the warren 

 was destroyed, they came again to have 

 as fair branched heads as any deer what- 

 ever in . the adjoining forest ' ' (of Which- 

 wood). Evelyn records a visit here in Oc- 

 tober, 1664 : — ' I went,' he says, ' with my 

 Lord -Viscount Cornbury to Cornbury, to 

 assist him in the planting of the park, and 

 bears him company, a house lately built 

 by the Erie of Denbigh in the middle of 

 a sweet park, walled with a dry wall ; the 

 parke weU stock'd.' * At present there are 

 about 450 acres open to the deer, of the 

 old forest breed ; the number does not 

 exceed 140. 



^ Gal. Pat. Rolls, p. 135. 

 ' Kennett, vol. ii. pp. 73, 74. 

 ' Plot's History of Oxfordshire, 2nd ed. 

 p. 194. 

 ■■• Evelyn's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 350. 



Still more surrounded by the forest of 

 Whichwood, of which, like Cornbury, it 

 was an adjunct, was the Royal seat and 

 park oi Lang ley : it is said to have been 

 occasionally used by the Court till the 

 reign of Charles I. King James I. was 

 here in progress in August, 1605.^ It re- 

 mained in the Crown, though long dis- 

 parked, till the recent enclosure of Which- 

 wood Forest. 



South of the forest near Witney is 

 Minster Lovel, where Sir William- Lovel 

 had license to impark certain lands in the 

 eighteenth of Henry VJ.^ 



North of Woodstock are the parks of 

 Ditchley and Glympton. The former con- 

 tains 330 acres, and 200 fallow-deer, the 

 latter 72 acres and 60 fallow-deer. Neither 

 of these parks is marked in the Surveys 

 of this county by Saxton in 1574, by 

 Speed in 1605, or by Plot in 1676. There 

 appears also to have been a park at 

 Broughton Castle, the seat of the Lords 

 Say and Sele. The name is preserved in 

 the ^ Buck Park^ and in the Records of 

 the Corporation of Banbury, 'The Lord 

 Sayes Buck,' is incidentally mentioned. 



At Hook-Norton, in the north of the 

 county, on the borders of Warwickshire, 

 Leland notices an ancient park, long dis- 

 used and forgotten. He describes it as 

 'a fayre Park and an old Manor-Place. 

 It longed to Chaucer, then to the Poles, 

 Dukes of Suffolk by marriage, now from 

 Brandon to the kynge by exchange.' ' 



If the map in Plot's ' History of Oxford- 

 shire ' may be taken as an authority, there 

 were in 1676 parks at Hanwell, the seat 



° Nichols's Progresses of James I., vol. i. 



P- 529- 



8 Cal. Pat. Rolls, p. 281. 



' Leland's Itinerary, vol, vii. pp. 72-3. Fol. 

 63- 



