Ill 
comon rights of nature, as they had hitherto 
been esteemed, and appropriated to their 
chiefs and leaders the exclusive privileges of 
hunting and the chase* 
When the Saxon Kings therefore had esta- 
blished themselves into a heptarchy, large 
districts of country, denominated Chases, were 
reserved by each sovereign as nurseries for 
game, and appropriated to his own particu- 
lar amusement. Nor can we much wonder 
that, in an age so uncivilized, when the ex- 
ercises of the body have always much greater 
attractions than the abstract meditations of 
the mind, and are, in fact, better suited to 
nourish those qualities of strength and of acti- 
vity which that state of society requires they 
should have found in hunting, in hawking, 
and in the various diversions of the field, the 
most eligible, and perhaps the most natural 
mode of filling up the leisure afforded by th# 
intervals of war. Nor, again, had their sub- 
jects individually any just reason to complain, 
inasmuch as they appear only to have appro- 
priated to their pleasures those lands which 
were before unoccupied and waste. But it 
was far otherwise when the Norman Kings 
