It is to be presumed, that a writer, whose works are so accurate as Coke’s are admitted to be, would not have stated that the wolf was an animal of chase in England, at the time when he wrote, in the sixteenth century, in the reign of Elizabeth, if it had then been extinct; and it must be borne in mind, that he has used the present tense in writing of it; which it is not likely that he would have done, if he had intended to write respecting an animal which had formerly been a beast of chase, but which had ceased to exist in England. We have, therefore, got to the point, that the wolf may fairly be believed not to have become extinct in England until at least some time in, or perhaps soon after, the reign of Elizabeth. I am, however, far from contending that it then existed in the southern or midland counties. On the contrary, it appears probable, that when Coke wrote, it had become extinct in all parts of England, except in some few of the most northern counties, of which two are contiguous to Scotland. In the southern parts, it may perhaps be presumed to have ceased to exist about, or soon after, the period of the accession of the Tudors to the throne; and it will be borne in mind that only seventy-three years elapsed between the accession of the first of that family, Henry VII. in 1485, and that of Elizabeth, who was the last of them, in 1558; and that no very extraordinary change took place in the cultivation or population of England, during that period. As we have the clear evidence of writers of such authenticity as Holinshed and Camden, that in the time of Elizabeth, all parts of Scotland abounded with wolves, and as there was nothing to prevent those animals from rambling across the Border, either in search of prey, or for bringing forth their young, or in consequence of any other natural instinct, it would be impossible, at that time, with a scanty population, and with the desolation incident to the unsettled state of the Borders, to keep the northern counties of England always free from them, and to prevent their breeding there. {298} Those parts of England were exposed to the incursions of Borderers and freebooters from Scotland, whose lawless and dangerous habits were almost as intolerable to their own countrymen as to the English, and who principally subsisted by pillage, and rendered life and property insecure, and, as a natural consequence, those parts were very thinly inhabited. Many very large districts in the northern counties consisted of wild wastes, forests, hills, woody valleys, and swamps, with a very scanty and semi-barbarous population: disadvantages which militated very much against the early extermination of savage animals. A change for the better, however, took place in the population, the civilization, and the appearance of the country, about the close of the reign of Elizabeth. I, however, am not aware that any English writer, since the time of Coke, has given us any reason to suppose that