126 The Animal-Lore of Shalcspeare’s Time. 
So tenacious was James of any interference with his 
favourite sport, that a writer of the time declares that in 
his reign one man might with greater safety kill another 
man than cause the death of a stag. 
In the Antiquarian Repertory, 1807 (vol. i. p. 2), a 
feat of agility and skill in horsemanship is reported of 
one John Selwyn, an under keeper of the park at Oat- 
lands, in Surrey, in the reign of Elizabeth. A grand 
stag-hunt was given in Oatlands Park, on the occasion of 
her Majesty’s visit to its owner. Selwyn attended, as 
was the duty of his office, and in the heat of the chase 
suddenly leaped from his horse upon the back of the 
stag, both running at that time with their utmost speed, 
and kept his seat gracefully in spite of every effort of the 
affrighted beast to dislodge him. Then drawing his 
sword, with it he guided the stag towards the Queen, and 
coming near her presence, plunged it into its throat, so 
that the animal fell dead at her feet. This was thought 
sufficiently wonderful to be chronicled on his monument, 
and he is accordingly there portrayed in the act of stab¬ 
bing the beast. The brass which records this feat of 
activity was, at the beginning of the present century, 
preserved in the church of Walton-on-Thames, but 
whether it has survived the epidemic of restoration from 
which so many churches have suffered in late years is 
uncertain. 
Hunting the stag was the most popular sport of the 
Middle Ages. The works on hunting were 
books without which no gentleman’s library 
w T as complete, and to make a mistake in any of the 
technical terms employed was to show a lamentable 
ignorance of the ways of good society. The pages of 
both poets and dramatists abound in allusions to this 
pastime. Shakspeare’s knowledge of woodcraft is fre¬ 
quently apparent. A spirited account of a stag-hunt, in 
the Return from Parnassus , a play written about the year 
