80 EXTINCT BRITISH ANIMALS. 



nets, to which he replies: "Yes, I pursue the wild 

 animals with swift hounds." He next enumerates 

 the different kinds of game which the Saxon hunter 

 usually hunted — " I take harts, and boars, and deer, 

 and roes, and sometimes hares." "Yesterday," he 

 continues, " I took two harts and a boar .... the 

 harts with nets, and I slew the boar with my weapon." 

 " How were you so hardy as to slay a boar V " My 

 hounds drove him to me, and I, there facing him,, 

 suddenly struck him down." "You were very bold, 

 then." " A hunter must not be timid, for various- 

 wild beasts dwell in the woods." 



The Welsh laws of Howel Dha (a.d. 940, fide 

 Spelman and Llwyd,) provided (cap. xvi. § 10) that 

 the wild boar should be hunted between the ninth 

 of November and the first of December, but later on, 

 in Edward II. 's time the season for hunting the 

 boar was between Christmas Day and Candlemas 

 Day (Feb. 2). 



Edward the Confessor, whose disposition seems to 

 have been suited rather to the cloister than to the 

 throne, would join in no secular amusement but the 

 chase. According to William of Malmesbury,* he 

 took the greatest delight to follow a pack of swift 

 hounds in pursuit of game, and to cheer them with 

 his voice. He had a royal palace at Brill, or Brehull, 

 Bucks, to which he often repaired for the pleasure of 

 hunting in his forest of Bernwood. This forest, it is 

 said, was much infested by a wild boar, which was. 



* " Hist. Eeg. Anglorum," Lib. II., cap. xiii. 



