In the 14th year of Edward IV. (1474), that monarch invaded France, and negotiations for a truce were commenced between Louis XI. and Edward, and we learn, from Baker’s _Chronicles_, that King Louis then presented Edward with the handsomest horse which Louis had in his stable, and an ass, and also “a wolf and a wild boar, beasts at that time rare in England.”{295b} Those are the exact words of Baker, and are very interesting, and, with reference to the objects of this paper, very valuable. It will be remarked, that he does not state or insinuate that wolves had been exterminated, or had ceased to exist in England, but merely that they had then become rare. We therefore have got so far towards the latter part of the fifteenth century, and appear not yet to have reached the period of their extinction. I have read somewhere, that it is traditionally stated that they were to be found either in the Forest of Dean or in the Forest of Dartmoor, as late as in the time of Queen Elizabeth; but unfortunately I omitted to take a note of the publication in which it was mentioned; and, although I have since devoted some time in endeavouring to discover it, I have not yet succeeded. Shakespeare wrote in the reign of Queen Elizabeth; and his allusion to England, and also to wolves, is worthy of notice, as showing his impression of their having at one period abounded in England, viz.:— “O, thou wilt be a wilderness again, Peopled with wolves, thy old inhabitants.” SHAKESPEARE’S _Henry IV._ 2nd part, act 4, sc. 4. Some passages in a very learned and celebrated work—the _Institutes of the Law of England_—by Sir Edward Coke (afterwards Lord Chief Justice of England, from that circumstance often called Lord Coke), who was a lawyer of great talents, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, will perhaps excite surprise, and are very important with reference to the subject of this inquiry. He was born in 1551; was made Solicitor General by Queen Elizabeth in 1592, and Attorney General in 1594. He was appointed Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas by James I. in 1606, and Lord Chief Justice of the Court of King’s Bench in 1613. His celebrated works—the _Commentary upon Sir Thomas Littleton’s Treatise_, and _the Institutes of the Laws of England_—required vast time and labour; and it is almost incredible that they could have been written after he became a judge; and consequently, it may be admitted, as is generally believed, that they were written whilst he was at the bar, and in the reign of Elizabeth.