James I. no doubt, as he was so fond of hunting, hunted the deer here, although he had Theobalds and Windsor, with many another hunting ground. And the deer were kept up in Charles I.’s reign, when Hyde Park was still an enclosed and private Royal park: and the deer were still preserved, for, when the Park was sold according to a special Resolution of the House of Commons of the 1st Dec., 1652, what were left of the deer, during those troublous times, were sold for the benefit of the Navy, and they were valued in the specifications at £765 6_s._ 2_d._ I can find no record of their sale--but they were sold. And soon after the Restoration, when James Hamilton, Esq. (one of the Grooms of the Bedchamber), was Ranger--he advised the Park being surrounded by a brick wall, and restocked with deer, which was done. But the deer no longer roamed the Park at will; they were confined in an enclosure, called Buckdean Hill, the Deer Harbour, or the Paddock, close by the Keepers’ Lodge, admission to which seems to have been obtainable by payment of a shilling--at least, in 1751, as we see by the following extract from a poem by W. H. Draper, entitled, “The Morning Walk, or the City Encompass’d.” “Behold the ranger[16] there! with gun aslant, As just now issuing from his cottage[17] fold, With crew _Cerberian_, prowling o’er the plain To guard the harmless deer, and range them in Due order set, to their intended use. Key he can furnish, but must first receive One splendid shilling, e’er I can indulge The pleasing walk, and range the verdant field.” As far as I can learn, the last Royal shooting of the deer in Hyde Park was on the 9th Sept., 1768, and it is the more interesting, considering how intimately we are now allied with the House of Saxe Cobourg Gotha. In _The Public Advertiser_ of Sept. 12, 1768, we read: “Same day, their Serene Highnesses the two Princes of Saxe Gotha, and many other Foreigners of Distinction, together with a great Number of our own Nobility, and Gentry, attended the Diversion of Deer Shooting in Hyde Park, which continued all the Evening till Dark, when one was at last killed, after being shot at ten Times. What rendered it so difficult to kill him, was the Hardship of getting him from among the Deer, and no other was allowed to be shot at but this one: Several Wagers were won and lost upon this Occasion.” The deer still remained, until early in this century, in this enclosure, which was in the north-west corner of the Park, bounded on the north by the Park wall, on the west by Kensington Gardens, on the south by the Serpentine, and on the east by a fence. Dogs were allowed in the other parts of the Parks, as our poet says,-- “But lo! a faithful spaniel, there stretch’d out, Not food for powder meet, relentless gun!”