A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE used for finding game for falconers. King James appears to have been devoted to every kind of sport except fox hunting, for he deemed it necessary for the preservation of game to appoint a vermin killer to destroy all foxes, etc. At Royston and at Theobalds he kept cormorants for fishing, and in the State papers we find entries of the appointments of partridge takers, masters of hawks, masters of bulls and bears, votary of birds keeper, ostringers, prickers of harriers, cock masters, etc., etc. Neither age nor illness deterred King James from his favourite amusements, for we read in a State paper of 1619 that ' the King re- moved from Royston to Ware being carried part of the way by the guard, in a portable chair, and the rest in a litter ; he came next day to Theobalds ; weak as he was he would have the deer mustered before him.' And in 1624 he would leave Royston to see some hawks fly at Newmarket, although it was against the orders of his physicians. After his death sport in Hertfordshire seems to have been pursued with less ardour by Charles I. ; but he was tenacious of his rights, and called upon the Chief Justice of England to punish severely all persons of inferior rank who killed deer or other game that had escaped from the royal preserves ; he also appointed gamekeepers in many counties, including Hertfordshire, to preserve the game (which ' was much destroyed in Herts ') for his royal sport. Charles II. also appointed gamekeepers at Royston, and Thomas Ellyot was made master of the harriers with an allowance of 500 a year for keeping the king's harriers. It is difficult to find any part of the old palace at Royston remaining, and Theobalds House was pulled down in 1641. Thus after the death of the Stuart monarchs Hertford- shire contained no royal residence, and the kings and queens of England ceased to take part in the sports of the county. The disafforesting of the royal chases and sale of the deer by order of Parliament during the time of the Rebellion, and the gloomy spirit of fanaticism which pervaded the country during the protectorate of Crom- well, did much to make the years following 1640 a blank in the sporting annals of this country ; but we gather that hunting, instead of being carried on in a stately and formal manner with all kinds of form and ceremony in enclosed parks as in the days of the Stuarts, gradually became a popular amuse- ment of the nobles, landowners and yeomen of the country ; the packs of hounds appear to have been generally of a mixed breed, and were expected to hunt all kinds of game and vermin. There was probably no public pack of hounds kept in Hertfordshire until about the year 1725, but we read of more than one pack of harriers being kept by private individ- uals which apparently hunted indiscriminately the hart, the hare or the fox. There are no records at Hatfield House of the times when Queen Elizabeth lived there, but she is said to have spent nearly all her leisure at this favourite resort in hunting and other field sports. It is also curious that there should be no records or bills or accounts to be found amongst the papers at Hatfield relating to the time when Lady Salisbury was mis- tress of the foxhounds from 1793 to 1828. There are however some few records of interest which were made by William, second Earl of Salisbury, who kept in his own hand- writing what we should now call a game book. These papers give an accurate record of all the deer killed in the two parks at Hatfield, and the names of the people to whom they were sent as presents. The lists do not distinguish between those that were killed in sport and those killed by the keepers, but we have an entry that one day the earl himself killed thirteen deer. We also find the following in the State papers, July 26, 1636 : ' By that time my Lord Salisbury was come in from the killing of a stagge in his woods it being a goodly deer and fatt. My Lord Cottington had it. Then we went to see the deer called, a bow was put into my Lord Cottington's hands, he shot thrice before he killed, all the ladies standing by.' The following is a bill for the keep of the pack of hounds at Hatfield in 1624 3 qrs. of oats at zs. a bushell. 8 live horses at 3*. 6 dead horses at 2s. i bushell of bran at is. ^.d. 6 bullocks livers at $d. 12 doz. sheeps' feet at id. per doz. This same Lord Salisbury also kept a list of all the deer that were in the two parks at Hatfield. In 1620 there were 336, all being fallow, though previously red deer had been kept in one of the parks. He gave particular instructions as to the necessity of carefully catching the deer that he wished to give away alive, so as not to ' bruise ' them. He seems to have purchased in one year six fallow deer from St. Jairtes's Park, ten from Hyde Park and ten from Eltham Park. Although his predecessor had exchanged Theobalds for Hatfield, the second earl appears to have retained the keepership of Theobalds, for we find memoranda relating to the red and fallow deer in Theobalds amongst the papers in the possession of Lord Salisbury 348
