GREASE. One of the important technical terms of venery, related to the fat of game; for in the Middle Ages, when game was hunted to replenish the larder as much as for sport, it entered largely into the economy of even the highest households. The fat of the red deer and fallow deer was called _suet_, occasionally _tallow_. That of the roebuck was bevy-grease. Between that of the hare, boar, wolf, fox, marten, otter, badger, and coney no difference was made--it was called grease; and in one sense this general term was also used for deer: "a deer of high grease," or "a hart in the pride of grease," were phrases used for the season of the year when the stag and the buck were fattest (_see_ Appendix: Seasons of Hunting). GREASE TIME, not _Grace Time_ or _Grass Time_, as Strutt and others have it. It did not include the whole season when the hart or buck could be killed, but meant to indicate the time when they were fat and fittest for killing. As pointed out already by Dryden (p. 25), the _Excerpta Historica_ (Lond. 1831) contains an interesting example of the use of this word. This is a letter written (p. 356) about 1480 by Thomas Stonor, Steward of the Manor of Thame. He was in Fleet Prison at the time he writes to his brother in the country concerning some property of his own in his brother's neighbourhood. "No more to you^e at thys tyme but ... more ov^r I entende to kepe my gresse tyme in yat countre, where fore I woll^e yat no man^e huntte tyll^e I have bene ther." In the privy-purse expenses of Henry VIII. (1532) is an entry of a payment for attendance on the king during the last _grece-time_. Cavendish in his Life of Wolsey says: "My lord continued at Southwell until the latter end of _grease time_." Both these passages refer to the month of June. In the laws of Howel the Good, King of Wales, a fine of 12 kine was imposed on whoever kills a hart in grease time (_kylleic_) of the kings. Confusion arose occasionally owing to the similarity of the words as formerly spelt, grass being sometimes spelt "grysse" (Dryden, p. 25). Manwood, also, misinterprets Grease time. In the agreement between the Earl of Winchester and the Baron of Dudley of 1247, in which their respective rights of hunting in Charnwood Forest and Bradgate Park, Leicestershire, were defined, and which agreement Shirley has given (in a translation) in his "English Deer Parks," the time of the fallow buck season (_tempus pinguedinis_) or grease time or the fat season, is fixed between the Feast of St. Peter ad Vincula (August 1) and the Exaltation of Holy Cross (September 6, 14), while the time of the doe season (_tempus firmationis_) was fixed between the Feast of St. Martin (November 11) and the Purification of the Blessed Virgin (February 2).