Writing of other traditions, 'one of the most beautiful of Easter customs still survives. Young men have not yet ceased on the Resurrection morning to climb the nearest hill-top to see the sun flash over the dark ridge of Quantock, or the more distant line of Mendip.' To see the newly-arisen sun on Easter morning was an augury of good luck. 'Early in the century Dunkery, probably because it is the highest land in Somerset, was favoured above all surrounding hills, and its sides,' says Miss King, 'were covered with young men, who seemed to come from every quarter of the compass, and to be pressing up towards the Beacon.' Exmoor stag-hunting is far-famed, for it is the only corner of England where wild red deer are still to be found. The fashion of coming here to hunt from a distant part of the country is comparatively modern, but Hugh Pollard, Ranger of the Forest, kept a pack of stag-hounds at Simonsbath more than three hundred years ago, and the Rangers who succeeded him continued to keep the hounds. Even before the Conquest, the moor had been a royal hunting-ground. Deeds show that in the reign of Edward the Confessor there were at least three Royal Foresters; and William I, says Mr Rawle, 'probably reserved to himself the forest rights, for the Conqueror, according to the Saxon Chronicle, "loved the tall deer as though he had been their father," and would scarcely be likely to forgo any privileges concerning the vert and venison.' Various tenures show that later Kings kept Exmoor as a preserve. Walter Aungevin held land in Auri and Hole (near South Molton) under Edward III, 'by sergeantry that whensoever our lord the King should hunt in the forest of Exmoor, he should find for him two barbed arrows.' And Morinus de la Barr, farther to the west, near Braunton, held his land on the same tenure with the addition of finding 'one salmon.' Nearly thirty years later in the same reign, a very curious tenure is registered. 'Walter Barun held certain lands and tenements in the town of Holicote, of the King in capite, by the service of hanging upon a certain forked piece of wood the red deer that die of the murrain in the King's forest of Exmoor; and also of lodging and entertaining the poor strangers, weakened by infirmities, that came to him, at his own proper costs, for the souls of the ancestors of our Lord King Edward.' The Forest of Exmoor was part of the jointure of several Queens of England. Henry VIII settled it on Catherine of Aragon, and it was afterwards held by Jane Seymour. James I gave it to his Queen, but Charles I had other views, and announced his intention of drawing 'the unnecessary Forests and Waste Lands' [Dartmoor and Exmoor] 'to improvement.' Needless to say, the scheme died in its early stages, and when Charles II came to the throne, he granted a lease of the forest to the Marquis of Ormonde.