146 



DEER AND DEER PARKS. 



Ch. VII. 



expression in the register of the Abbey 

 of Croxton (infra ambitum muri) to have 

 been a park enclosed with a wall as early 

 as the year 1162. From a careful exami- 

 nation of the passage however of the 

 register, as printed by Dugdale, it ap- 

 pears to me that the expression parci de 

 Croxton probably refers to the enclosure 

 there, as distinguished from the open 

 lands, in the same sense as that in which 

 it is constantly used in the North of Eng- 

 land and in Scotland and Ireland. The 

 present park, I suspect therefore, from its 

 not appearing in the lists of Saxton, 

 Speed, or Burton, was not enclosed till 



after the middle of the seventeenth cen- 

 tury. 



Existing Deer Parks ifi Leicestershire. 



1. Bradgate . . Earl of Stamford 



and Warrington. 



2. Garendon . . Mr. Phillipps, now 



called De Lisle. 



3. DONINGTON . . Marquis of Hast- 



ings. 

 Staunton-Harold, The Earl Ferrers. 

 Bos WORTH . . Sir A. Dixie, Bart. 

 GOPSALL . . The Earl Howe. 

 Croxton . . The Duke of Rut.^' 



land. 



RUTLAND. 



A considerable portion of the little 

 county of Rutland was in former days 

 occupied by the Royal Forest, which went 

 by the same name, traces of which appear 

 in the numerous enclosed woods with 

 which Speed's map' of the county is 

 studded. Rutland Forest was also called 

 ' Lee-fielde,' and to the north of it was the 

 ancient park or wood of Okeham, called 

 'Fliteris,' ericlosed by Richard Earl of 

 Cornwall, by hcense, in the thirtieth year 

 of Henry III.* In Saxton's map it is en- 

 graved ' Flyttern Parke : ' it is mentioned 

 as Okeham Park, from whence it is not 

 faf distant, in the forty-seventh of Edward 

 III., when William Gambion was ap- 

 pointed keeper during pleasure.' 



Ridlington Park, in the southern dis- 



' Monastlcon, vol. vi. pt. 2, p. 872, ed. 

 1830. 

 ■■' Cal. Pat. Rolls, p. 23. 



trict of this forest, is recognised as a park 

 in the thirty-ninth of Henry III., when it 

 was the subject of an inquest on the part of 

 Peter de Montfort ; * it afterwards belonged 

 to the Harringtons, and is marked as a 

 park both in the Surveys of Saxton (1576) 

 and Speed (about i6id). 



South of Ridlington the Bishops of 

 Lincoln had a park marked in the ancient 

 surveys at Liddington, which the Patent 

 Rolls show to have been increased by 

 license in the fifth of Edward III. with 

 sixty acres of land, and to have been 

 enclosed with a stone wall." 



Near Burley-on-the-Hill, in the centre 

 of the county, Saxton marks a park, called 

 ' Barnsdale.' 



At Burley was 'a princely park and 



. " Cal. Pat. Rolls, p. 47. 

 • lb. p. 27. 

 ' lb. p. III. 



