Ch. VII. 



RUTLAND. 



147 



woods adjoining,' purchased from the 

 Hao-ingtons of Exton, by the celebrated 

 George Vilhers Duke of Buckingham, 

 ' who made it one of the finest seats in 

 these parts of England.' 1 Among the 

 State Papers is a warrant, dated Decem- 

 ber 30, 1634, to advance to John Scan- 

 daren 100/., for bringing 40 red-deer alive 

 from Hatfield Chase, Yorkshire, to this 

 park, no doubt a present from the King 

 to the Duke.^ Evelyn visited it in 1654, 

 and observes, ' Next by Burleigh House, 

 belonging to the Duke of Buckingham, 

 and worthily reckon'd among the noblest 

 seates in England, situate on the brow of 

 a hill, built a la moderne, near a park 

 wall'd in, and a fine wood at the descent.' ^ 

 Near Burley is Exton Park, enclosed by 

 license of Charles I. about the fifteenth 



year of his reign. It is a noble existing 

 park of 800 acres, with a herd of 400 fal- 

 low-deer. 



One other park remains in this county, at 

 Normanton, a littletothesouth of Exton : it 

 contains 700 acres, 400 of which are appro^ 

 priated to a herd of about 500 fallow-deer. 

 The date of its enclosure is uncertain. 



In Speed's map, it may be added, a 

 park is marked at Uppingham, and others 

 are given in the map attached to ' Wright's 

 Rutlandshire' (1684) at Martinsthorp, 

 Lord Denbigh's, and at the Priory at 

 Brooke. 



Existing Parks in the County of 

 Rutland. 



Exton . . 

 Normanton. 



Earl of Gainsborough. 

 Lord Aveland. 



NOR THA MP TON SHIRE. 



Morton, in his 'Natural History of 

 Northamptonshire,' printed in 1712, ob- 

 serves that there are more parks in this 

 county than in any other county in Eng- 

 land, and proceeds to add, that although 

 some of them, particularly those which 

 bear that name in the older maps of the 

 county, are now disused, and retain only 

 the name; yet the number is rather 

 enlarged than diminished, and that 

 there are now above twenty parks that 

 have deer in them, and they all lie at a 

 convenient distance from the houses of 



' Wright's Rutlandshire, 1684, p. 30. 



" S. P. "0. Domestic, p. 423. 



' Evelyn's Memoirs, 4to. ed., vol. i. p. 276. 



the owners, whereas some of the older 

 ones, now disparked, were remote.* 



The Forest of Rockingham, spread over 

 the northern districts of this county, on 

 the borders of Rutlandshire, appears to 

 have been from the earliest times studded 

 with a number of parks, besides several 

 ^ Lawns, in the nature of parks ^ as we 

 find from the ' Reports on Woods and 

 Forests and Land Revenue of the Crown,' 

 submitted to Parliament in 1792.^ There 

 were in this forest at this period 'the 

 Lawn of Benefield, 384 acres, , in the 



' Morton's Histoiy, p. 12. ., 

 ' 9th Report, p. 549. 



