“Sept. 13, 1731.  Some of the royal family and persons of quality hunted a stag in Richmond Park.  A stag gored the horse of Coulthorp Clayton, Esq., and threw him.  The Lady Susan Hamilton was unhorsed.

“Sept. 14, being Holy Rood Day, the king’s huntsmen hunted their free buck in Richmond new park with bloodhounds, according to custom.”

It will be noted that this sport took place at a season when no hunting is now done in England.

There are two other small royal parks within a walk of Richmond—­Bushy and Hampton Court.  Both contain magnificent trees.

The New Forest is now the only royal appanage of the kind, and the House of Hanover has never made use of it for hunting purposes, although the Stuart kings were very fond of going there.  It was to enjoy this territory that Charles II. commenced the magnificent palace at Winchester, the finished portions of which are now used as barracks.  Nell Gwyn’s quarters at the deanery are still shown.  Up to 1779 there was a great tract of royal forest-ground near London, on the Essex side, known as Enfield Chase, containing numbers of deer.  If we remember rightly, it is alluded to in The Fortunes of Nigel.

There are many more parks in the south than in the north of England—­a circumstance which is remarkable, having regard to the wilder character of the ground in the former.

According to a valuable work on parks published a few years ago by Mr. Shirley, a large landed proprietor, there are three hundred and thirty-four parks still stocked with deer in the different counties of England, and red deer are found in about thirty-one.  It is supposed that the oldest is that attached to Eridge Castle, near that celebrated and most ancient of English watering-places, Tonbridge Wells, in Sussex.  It is very extensive, and there are no less than ninety miles of grass drives cut through the park and woods.  Almost the largest park is that attached to the present duke of Marlborough’s famous seat, Blenheim.  A large proportion of this magnificent demesne formed part of Woodstock Chase, a favorite hunting-seat of British sovereigns from an early date up to the time of Queen Anne.  It was then granted by the Crown to the hero of Blenheim, far more fortunate in respect of the nation’s gift than the hero of Waterloo, whose grant of lands lay in a swamp which it cost him a little fortune to drain.  Next to Blenheim, in point of size, stands Tatton in Cheshire, the seat of Lord Egerton.  It contains 2500 acres, and the portion appropriated to deer is far larger than at Blenheim.  Tatton is from ten to eleven miles around.

Another extensive park, 1500 acres, is that at Stowe, the duke of Buckingham’s.  When in 1848 the family misfortunes reached a climax which necessitated the sale of everything in Stowe House, the deer in the park were sold off.  But twenty-five years have rolled by, and restored in a great degree the prosperity of the family.  The duke is again living at his splendid ancestral seat, is by degrees restoring to their former home as the opportunity offers many of its scattered treasures, and has restocked the park with deer.