Venison-grants, when made, usually took the form of a tithe of the hunting. The tithe of the wild boars killed in Dean Forest went to the abbey of St. Peter’s, Gloucester; the tithe of the deer hunted in Pickering Lythe went to the abbey of St. Mary’s, York; and that of Duffield Frith and Needwood to the priory of Tutbury. As a result of these and like grants, venison pasties no doubt very occasionally smoked on the common tables of those laxer monasteries where flesh-eating was permissible; but, as a rule, the only venison consumed within conventual buildings would be reserved for guests of considerable distinction, or for use in the infirmary. Next to charges of deep drinking, charges of hunting, poaching, and venison-gorging have always been the commonest and most generally accepted accusations against England’s religious. This notion was not only one of the mainstays of ribald contemporary ballads, or used to lend point to the rollicking jests of such writings as “Ingoldsby Legends,” but has even been gravely endorsed and circumstantially told both in the poetry and the prose of writers of repute. Now it so happens that an opportunity of testing the truth of such charges, after a dry legal fashion, has just recently occurred. It has long been known that in the very few cases where hunting or deer-stealing of any form came to the knowledge of monastic Visitors, it was severely condemned and punished; but how about the general records of the various forest courts, wherein “benefit of clergy” could not be pleaded after the same fashion as elsewhere, and where clerks of every kind were subject to presentment? Within the past twelve monks almost the whole of the muniments at the Public Record Office have been overhauled for an historical purpose altogether apart from any such question as the one now under discussion. The proceedings of forest courts were extraordinarily thorough, and screened none. The verderers who sat in judgment at the smaller courts were elected by the freeholders in county court, but subject to removal by the Crown; the foresters were partly hereditary and partly Crown appointments; the reeves and four chief men had also to attend from each township, as well as bailiffs and jurors from each hundred in the forest precincts. Moreover, before each Eyre or Forest Pleas before the Justices, a “regard” of the whole forest was undertaken, which was a most thorough and exhaustive investigation under many heads, carried out and duly scheduled by twelve resident knights. Nor would there be any disposition, but the contrary, to screen monks or canons, for they were often regarded with keen jealousy by high-placed officials and seculars of influence. From the temptations that lay at the very threshold of the majority of the monastic houses--the inmates of many never being able to set a foot outside their walls which was not on forest ground--and from the genuine excuse that not a few would have of entering forest thickets