tonshire, found to be held of the king by the service of hunting the wolf, fox, and badger.1 In the reign of Edward II. (1320) John Le Wolfhunt, or Wolf hurt, son and heir of John Le Wolfhunt, or Wolf hurt, held lands in Wormhill, in Derbyshire, by the service of chasing and taking all wolves that might come into the King's Forest of the Peak in that county.2 In the eleventh year of Edward III. (1366), John, Lord Roos, of Hamlake, had a charter granted to him by the king, of free warren in lands in Nottinghamshire and Oxfordshire, and also to hunt the fox, wolf, hare and cat, throughout the King's Forest of Nottinghamshire," In the thirty-third year of Edward III, (1358) Vitalis Engaine died seized of part of the lordships of Laxton and Pichesse, in Northamptonshire, held by petit serjeanty, to hunt the wolf whensoever the king should command.* In the forty-first year of the reign of Edward III. (1366), Thomas de Engaine, Lord of Blatherwic died, seized of land, meadows, and rent in Pightesse, in Northamptonshire, held by the service of "finding, at his own proper costs, certain dogs for the destruction of wolves, foxes, martrons [marten cats,] cats, [wild cats,] and other vermine," within the counties of Northampton, Rutland, Oxford, Essex, and Buckingham.5 Of course it is not pretended, that at the dates of the deaths of any of the before-mentioned personages, who died seized of lands held by the tenure of destroying wolves, such a tenure is conclusive evidence that those animals existed at the times of the deaths of those personages respectively; because it may have happened that the lands may have descended from father to son, several times, after the dates of the original royal grants or charters creating such tenures; still, even in that case, enough is shewn to prove that they were not extinct until centuries after the time of King Edgar. Besides which it must not be forgotten, that the charter before-mentioned of the eleventh year of the reign of Edward III. to John, Lord Roos, of Hamlake, then gave him a license to hunt the wolf in the king's forest of Nottinghamshire, which would have been useless if there were not then any such animal to hunt. We, therefore, have some evidence that wolves existed in England in the fourteenth century; but it is very probable that they had been destroyed in the more populous and cultivated counties, although for more than a 1 Dugdale's "Baronage," vol. 1, p. 466. * Camden's "Mag. Britannia," Gough's edition, vol. 2, p. 302.-Lyson's "Magna Britannia," title, "Derbyshire," p. clxix., and 280, quoting Dodsworth's "Collection from Exchequer Records." century longer, they continued to be occasionally met with in the more wild and thinly peopled parts of England, especially in the northern counties. In the fifteenth century they probably became scarce. In the fourteenth year of the reign of Edward IV., (1474) when that monarch invaded France, and negociations for a truce were commenced between Louis XI. and Edward, we learn from Baker's "Chronicles," that King Louis presented Edward with the handsomest horse which Louis had in his stable, and an ass, and also "a wolf and a wild boar, beasts at that time rare in England." Those are the exact words of Baker, and are very interesting, and with reference to the objects of this paper, very valuable. It will be remarked, that he does not state or insinuate that wolves had been exterminated or had ceased to exist in England, but merely that they had then become rare. We, therefore, have got so far towards the latter part of the fifteenth century, and appear not yet to have reached the period of their extinction. I have read somewhere that it is traditionally stated, that they were to be found either in the forest of Dean or in the forest of Dartmoor, as late as the time of Queen Elizabeth; but, unfortunately, I omitted to take a note of the publication in which it was mentioned, and although I have since devoted some time in endeavouring to discover it, I have not yet succeeded. Shakspeare wrote in the reign of Elizabeth, and his allusion to England, and also to wolves, is worthy of notice, as shewing his impression of their having at one period abounded in England, viz. : "O thou will be a wilderness again Peopled with wolves, thy old inhabitants." Shakspeare's "Henry IV.," 2nd part, Act 4, Scene 4. Some passages in that learned and celebrated work, "The Institutes of the Laws of England," by Sir Edward Coke (afterwards Lord Chief Justice of England, from that circumstance often called Lord Coke), who was a lawyer of great talents in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, will, perhaps, excite surprise, and are very important with reference to the subject of this enquiry. He was born in 1551, was made Solicitor-General by Queen Elizabeth in 1592, and Attorney-General in 1594. He was appointed Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas by James I. in 1606, and Lord Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench in 1613. His celebrated works the "Commentary upon Sir Thomas Littleton's Treatise," and 1 Baker's "Chronicles," folio 213. We cannot reasonably doubt that the wild boar, ting a favourite beast of chase, and not being so destructive an animal as the wolf, would this country a considerable time after the wolf was destroyed. the "Institutes of the Laws of England," required vast time and labour; and it is almost incredible that they could have been written after he became a Judge, and consequently it may be admitted, as is generally believed, that they were written whilst he was at the bar, and in the reign of Elizabeth. It is well known that the precincts of the forests in England had courts of their own, and were governed by different laws from the rest of England; and, of course, in treating upon the laws of this country, so learned and so accurate a writer, as Coke is admitted to have been, could not avoid noticing them. In the part of his Institutes upon the Forest Courts, he describes the jurisdiction and functions of those tribunals, and the animals to be met with in the forests of England; and in the quaint and peculiar language incident to writers of the time of Queen Elizabeth, he proceeds to mention the beasts of chase and of the forest. The following are extracts from his work upon that subject:"There be many beasts of the forest by the laws of the forests of England. The hart in summer, the hinde in winter, and all that proceed as of them; the buck in summer, the doe in winter, and the proceed of them; the hare, male and female, and their proceed; the wild boar, male and female, and their proceed and the wolf, male and female, and their proceed; the fox, male and female, and their proceed; the martin, male and female; capreolus the roe, as it appeareth before, is no beast of the forest, but it is a beast of chase. "The proceeds of the hare, the first year a leveret, the second a hare, the third a great hare. Of a wilde boar: a pig, a hogge, a hog-stear, a boar, and after a sanglier." "No beast of the forest, that is solivagum et nocivum is venison, as the fox, the wolf, the martin, because they be no meat, but caro eorum est nociva." "So as the red deer, the fallow deer, the wild boar, and the hare, are venison. Whereupon these two conclusions in the law of the forest do follow First, whatsoever beast of the forest is for the food of man is venison, and therewith agreeth Virgil describing a feast, 'Implentur veteris bacchi pinguisq: ferinæ.'"' It is to be presumed that a writer whose works are so accurate, as Coke's are admitted to be, would not have stated, that the wolf was an animal of chase in England at the time when he wrote, in the sixteenth century, in the reign of Elizabeth, if it had then been extinct, and it must be borne in mind, that he has used the present tense in writing of it, which it is not likely that he would have done, if he had intended to write respecting an animal which had formerly been a beast of chase, Coke's "Institutes of the Laws of England," vol 4 P 316. but which had ceased to exist in England. We have, therefore, got to the point, that the wolf may fairly be believed, not to have become extinct in England, until at least, some time in, or perhaps soon after, the reign of Elizabeth. I am, however, far from contending that it then existed in the southern cr midland counties; on the contrary, it appears probable, that when Coke wrote, it had become extinct in all parts of England, except in some few of the most northern counties, of which two are contiguous to Scotland. In the southern parts it may, perhaps, be presumed to have ceased to exist, about, or soon after, the period of the accession of the Tudors to the throne; and it will be borne in mind that only seventy-three years elapsed between the accession of the first of that family, Henry VII. in 1485, and that of Elizabeth, who was the last of them, in 1558, and that no very extraordinary change took place in the cultivation or population of England during that period. As we have the clear evidence of writers of such authenticity as Holinshed and Camden, that in the time of Elizabeth all parts of Scotland abounded with wolves, and as there was nothing to prevent those animals from rambling across the border, either in search of prey or for bringing forth their young, or in consequence of any other natural instinct, it would be impossible at that time with a scanty population, and with the desolation incident to the unsettled state of the borders, to keep the northern counties of England always free from them, and to prevent their breeding there.1 Those parts of England were exposed to the incursions of borderers and freebooters from Scotland, whose lawless and dangerous habits were almost as intolerable to their own countrymen as to the English, and who principally subsisted by pillage and rendered life and property insecure, and, as a natural consequence, those parts were very thinly inhabited. Many very large districts in the northern counties consisted of wild wastes, forests, hills, woody valleys and swamps, with a very scanty and semi-barbarous population; disadvantages which militated very much against the early extermination of savage animals. A great change for the better, however, took place in the population, the civilization, and the appearance of the country about the close of the reign of Elizabeth. I, however, am not aware that any English writer since the time of Coke has given us any reason to suppose that wolves were to be found in England after the termination of her reign. We can scarcely suppose that Coke was incorrect in mentioning wolves as 1 Camden states that at the time when he wrote, wolves did not appear in England Magna Britannia," Gough's edition, vol. 3, p 16: but as there were then abundance of them in Scotland, it was clear that they could not be prevented from roaming from thence into England and breeding there. beasts of chase in England at the time when he wrote. It seems, however, only reasonable to believe, under all the circumstances, that they were at that time extinct in all the southern parts, but that a few then remained in their fastnesses and retreats in forests, hills, and wild districts, in some of the northern counties of England, and especially in the parts adjacent to Scotland, and furnished employment and sport to the hunters, and that, with the increase of population and cultivation, the clearing away of woods and forests, and the more general use of fire-arms, they at last became extinct in the northern counties, about the commencement of the seventeenth century, which was near the period of the close of the reign of Elizabeth. The thanks of the meeting were unanimously voted to Mr. Brooke for his communication. SIXTH ORDINARY MEETING, Held at the ROYAL INSTITUTION, on the 12th January, 1857, THOMAS INMAN, Esq., M.D., PRESIDENT, in the Chair. The following were elected Ordinary Members: Rev. JAMES CRANBROOK, ERASMUS HOLDEN, F.C.S. It was moved by Dr. IHNE, and unanimously resolved, "That this Society present an address to WILLIAM BROWN, Esq., M.P., to express their sense of grateful appreciation for the munificence which he has lately shown in furthering the objects of Science and Literature, by undertaking to erect, at his own expense, a building for a Public Library and Museum in Liverpool; and that the President, three Vice-Presidents, Treasurer, and Hon. Secretary, be appointed a committee to draw up and present the above address." It was moved by Mr. ANDREW, and resolved, "That it be referred to the Council to consider the propriety of marking the Society's appreciation of Dr. Livingston's discoveries." Mr. RICHARD BROOKE, F.S.A., exhibited the Liverpool Poll-book for the election of March 31st, 1761, containing the names of several families still resident in the town. He also exhibited the autograph of William Roscoe to a bond of indemnity. |