James I. was a good sportsman, even down to cock-fighting, for he restored the cockpit which Elizabeth had been at particular pains to abolish, and appointed a Cockmaster for breeding, feeding, and managing the King’s game-cocks. But this was an occasional pastime. He enjoyed many a manlier diversion in the excitement of the hunt, refreshing himself between times at the Banqueting House erected in the middle of Hyde Park, with a deep draught of good sack ere he returned to the Palace of Whitehall. When his Queen was visited by her brother, the King of Denmark, a series of Royal entertainments were arranged for him. In an old MS. preserved in the _Harleian Miscellany_ a full description of some of these occasions is given, and it may be read that: “... In the morning very early, being Saturday (Aug. 2nd, 1606), they hunted in the park of St. James, and killed a buck. Then passed they on to Hyde Park, where they hunted with great delight, spending the rest of the forenoon in following their pastime; and about the time of dinner they returned and there dined; and about four o’clock, their barges being by commandment ready at the privy stairs, they went by water to Greenwich.” To the sporting proclivities of James I. we owe a _Book of Sports_, in which the Royal writer authorised all those who had been to their own parish church, to indulge in “sports on the Lord’s Day,” including dancing, archery, leaping, vaulting, May games, morrice dances, and setting up of Maypoles; though bull and bear baiting, interludes, and bowls, were prohibited. The King ordered the book to be read in the churches, but the Primate absolutely refused to do so. About twenty years later, news of deer escaping from the Old Park at Wimbledon, and having been killed, reached Charles I. He therefore forbade any person to go into his woods carrying a gun, or engine, to take, or destroy the game, and if any presumed _after notice given in the churches_, to come thus provided, the King would have them punished. Is it not a bit of delightful irony that the Lord’s Day Observance Act, abolishing all these revels, and under which even now tradesmen are occasionally fined for opening their shops on Sundays, was a gift to our generation from that austere monarch Charles II.? Owing, no doubt, to the strict laws for its preservation made by James I., game seems to have much increased in the forest glades and about the marshes and rivulets in Hyde Park. Still the cooks appear to have been playing their old trick of trying to get venison cheap, for in 1619 the State Papers have a record that two men were found shooting deer in Hyde Park. They were captured by the keepers, and were hanged at Hyde Park Corner, as well as an unfortunate labourer whom they had employed to hold their dogs. One wet season played havoc with the deer in “Marybone” Park—known to-day as Regent’s Park—and a warrant was issued to the Keeper of Hyde Park to send three brace of bucks to help make up the deficiency.