THE RED DEER 
At the time of the Conquest the King of England possessed eight deer 
parks, and to-day His Majesty King George V is the owner of four, 
namely, Windsor (which includes Cranbourne, and used to include Stoke), 
Richmond, Bushey, and Greenwich. King Charles II used to hunt in St 
James’s Park and Hyde Park, but the deer were removed to Bushey Park 
in the year of the Coronation of Queen Victoria. 
The Duke of Devonshire is the only subject who has as many deer parks 
as the Sovereign. He owns Chatsworth, Hardwick, Bolton, and Holker, 
and about fifteen other persons own more than one. In 1867 Mr Evelyn 
Shirley described 334 parks as then containing deer. To this number 
Mr Whitaker added fifty more, which had either been omitted by 
Mr Shirley, or had recently come into existence. The largest park in 
England is Savernake, which is over four thousand acres in extent; quite 
as large as many of the German and Austrian deer forests, for whose 
trophies prizes are annually given. The deer in Savernake are practically 
unrestrained, yet they do not seem to wander over the surrounding 
country, having sufficient of browsing and grazing in their own beautiful 
domain. Next in size come Windsor, Eridge, Knowsley, Tatton, Dan- 
combe, Blenheim, and Buckhurst, which are all over two thousand acres. 
There are now red deer in eighty-eight English parks. The finest red deer 
in the British islands are in Warnham Park, Sussex, whilst the fallow 
deer of Petworth, Sussex, carry the best antlers, although they are not so 
large as the semi -feral deer on the Duke of Buccleuch’s estate in Dum- 
friesshire. 
It is now necessary to say a few words with regard to the wild deer 
of England, and to show how these animals have been gradually forced 
back to two sanctuaries, namely, the Westmorland Fells and the Devon 
and Somerset woods and moorlands, where they alone remain in feral 
conditions. 
In the days of Charles II the country north of Nottinghamshire was 
still covered with great forests, in which many red deer were to be found, 
and, even at that time there were, in the south of England, still great tracts 
of unreclaimed woods at Epping, St Leonards, Exmoor, Wolmer, the 
New Forest, and in Cornwall. For the most part these remained, to a large 
extent, untouched until the beginning of the nineteenth century. Royal 
hunts frequently took place in Epping and the New Forest, whilst we 
read that in Wolmer red deer to the number of 500 were driven along 
the vale of Wolmer Forest for the amusement of Queen Anne. St Leonard’s 
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