Pinched and old, and yet rouged to the eyes—for she was vain to the last—Elizabeth disappears from the scene she had so adorned, and James VI. of Scotland rides into London—in hunting costume, “a doublet, green as the grass he stood on, with a feather in his cap, and horn by his side”—to claim the English throne. On the way he had delayed his progress to make two or three sporting expeditions from the great houses at which he stayed. Clearly this was a type of monarch under whom Hyde Park would be put to other uses than the shows and fêtes and fashionable dallyings of Elizabeth. So it quickly proved. His first act of authority over the Royal demesne was to appoint Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, Keeper of Hyde Park for life, with significant instructions. The Queen, his predecessor, being a woman, had been too lenient; he now wished closer supervision, more careful preservation of the game, and a smart eye to be kept on poachers. Hyde Park again became the closest of Royal preserves, maintained for hunting alone. An occasional passage met with in contemporary letters shows how strictly the forest laws were enforced. Osborne, writing of this time in 1658, long after James’s death, says of the game laws instituted by that monarch: “Nay, I dare boldly say one Man might with more safety have killed another than a raskall-Deare; but if a Stagge had been knowne to have miscarried, and the authour fled, a Proclamation with a description of the party had been presently penned by the Attourney-generall, and the penalty of His Majesty’s displeasure (by which was understood the Star-Chamber) threatened against all that did abet comfort or relieve him. Thus satyricall, or if you please Tragicall, was this sylvan Prince, against Dear-Killers and indulgent to man-slayers.” A deer was of more value than a man, and a mole was apparently of importance. Among the State Papers is a Warrant issued the day after Christmas, 1603, authorising the Vice-Chamberlain to pay Richard Hampton, _official Mole-taker_ in St. James’s Park, and the gardens and grounds at Westminster, Greenwich, Richmond, and Hampton Court, the fee of fourpence a day and twenty shillings yearly for livery. A man had just resigned the post, which was evidently considered a lucrative one, as there were several applications for it.