THE FALLOW DEER 
that in 1559 Lord Barclay arrived with his wife and family at Callowden, 
near Coventry, and hunted bucks in the parks of Berkswell, Groby, 
Leicester Forest, Tiley and Bradgate. Then, after a short rest he hunted 
in the parks of Kenilworth, Astley, and Wedgknock, on the other side of 
his house. This sporting pilgrimage he repeated annually for thirty years. 
Buck hunting in those days was a summer diversion, practised in the 
late afternoon after the usual two o’clock dinner; the season for bucks 
being from June 24 to September 14, and for does, from November 1 to 
February 2. At this period Fallow deer were often coursed and held by grey- 
hounds trained for the purpose, a practise which is still maintained with 
rough deerhounds at Eastwell Park, in Kent, an enclosure which was 
emparked by Sir Thomas Finch in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. These 
hounds, which belong to Lord Winchilsea, are trained to run down and 
hold the Fallow buck by the ears, and it is then taken without injury. At 
the present day, too, “ buck taking ” is also practised with success at 
Woburn, where about a hundred are captured every winter by dogs. 
James the First used to shoot deer with bow and arrow, and the cross- 
bow was used in parks so late as the middle of the eighteenth century. 
During a visit to Cowdray, Elizabeth, with the crossbow, shot three or 
four deer, which had previously been driven into a small paddock. The 
Virgin Queen sat in a “stand” specially built for the purpose, overlooking 
the enclosure, and “ potted ” the unfortunate animals at very close range. 
In the seventeenth century the number of Fallow deer in England must 
have been enormous. Moryson, in his ” Itinerary ” (1617), suggests 
that there were at that time more Fallow deer in a single English county 
than in all Europe besides. ” Every gentleman,” he says, “ of £500 or 
£1,000 rent by the year, hath a park for them, enclosed with pales of wood 
for two or three miles compass.” 
Hyde Park was already fenced for deer when Henry VIII acquired the 
Manor of Hyde from the monks of Westminster. Edward VI hunted there 
with the French ambassadors, and subsequently all the English monarchs. 
Under James I some deer stealers were taken, and executed at the park 
gates. After the Restoration the park was re-stocked, and surrounded 
by a brick wall, which lasted until 1726, when a new wall was built, six and 
a half feet high inside, and eight feet high outside. It was this wall which 
Mr Bingham’s famous horse twice jumped in 1792 in the presence of 
distinguished spectators. Iron railings replaced the wall about 1825. The 
Fallow deer remained there until the year of Queen Victoria’s Coronation, 
151 
