THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
century, these parks and hays increased in number, and as the forests 
fell before the woodman’s axe, the wild deer were driven further and 
further afield, and from one stronghold to another. A licence to empark 
any piece of forest had to be obtained from the Grown, and many such 
licences are still in existence. In 1404 the Commons tried to abolish this 
law, but without success, and it was not until after the Restoration that 
these licences became unnecessary. Another privilege was the right to 
construct saltatorium or deep -leaps, a contrivance by which wild deer 
could jump into a park, but not leap back to freedom. In the Middle Ages 
deer-parks were often constructed at some distance from the owner’s 
house, and their custody was entrusted to the care of a “ lodge-keeper,” 
who lived in ” The Lodge ” to which nobles retired from society and 
enjoyed the pleasure of their chase on horseback. Most of these parks 
were surrounded with high oak palings, but a few, such as Wootton, Ash- 
ton, Petworth and Woburn, had high stone walls. 
At the time of the Reformation most of the bishops, abbots, and priors 
had their own deer parks. Early in the reign of Henry VIII, the See of 
Norwich had thirteen, whilst the Archbishop of Canterbury had the right 
of hunting in no fewer than twenty parks and chases. Thus parks con- 
tinued to increase throughout England until the time of Cromwell. In 
1575 Saxton’s maps show that there were seven hundred parks in England. 
The Percy family alone owned twenty -one deer parks, containing 5,500 
deer. 
Harrison, writing in 1577, grumbles at the excessive creation and 
upkeep of deer parks, saying that a twentieth part of the realm was given 
up to ‘‘ deer and coneys.” If the good historian had lived to-day he would 
see how little things have since altered except that, as Kipling remarks, 
” the pheasant is master of many a shire.” A little later Stow, in his 
“Annals” (1592), quotes Andrew Borde (1562), “There be more parks 
in England than in all Europe beside.” 
Henry VIII, Elizabeth, and James I were all devoted to the chase of 
red and fallow deer, but there seems to have been a decline in the number 
of deer parks between the reigns of Elizabeth and Charles I. During the 
great Civil War many parks were destroyed, the deer being driven out 
or killed, the king’s parks suffering amongst the rest. At the Restoration, 
however, a few of the old parks were restocked, and a large number of 
new ones came into existence. Most of the large ones existing to-day 
were created at that time. 
6 
