James I hunted in the Forest, closed the Little Park against the public,
and turned out some wild pigs, of which a few are still left. In his
time the circumference of the unenclosed Forest on the Berkshire side of
the river measured seventy-seven miles and a half, and here ran the red
deer. The Home Park of two hundred and eighty acres held two hundred and
forty fallow deer, and the Great Park of three thousand six hundred and
fifty acres held eighteen hundred. Charles I also hunted there, and at
the beginning of the Civil War deer were lawlessly killed and the pales
of the Park destroyed. Bulstrode Whitelocke was Constable of the Castle
and Keeper of the Forest under the Commonwealth, but could not keep down
the poaching. Charles II and William III planted the Long Walk.
Queen Anne hunted in a chaise, and Swift, in 1711, says that she was
hunting until four in the afternoon, and covered more than forty miles.
She planted with oaks the ride known by her name. Sarah, Duchess of
Marlborough, was Ranger for many years, and has to be gratefully
remembered for protecting the trees against Walpole when he was in need
of money. Though the first two Georges did nothing for the Castle except
by neglecting it, in their reigns there were several plantings of trees.
The avenue of lime trees east of Cumberland Lodge was made under George
I. Under George II were formed some of the plantations round about the
heathery Smith's Lawn at the south end of the Park: these were the first
to be shaped according to the lines of the ground, and not circular or
in parallelograms as before; and it is said that some of this work was
given, for lack of anything else, to soldiers raised against the
Rebellion of 1745. In the time of George II thirteen-hundred red deer
ran in the Forest. By 1806 they numbered only three hundred, though as
late as 1813 the Forest was fifty-six miles and a half in circumference,
and included Wokingham and a great part of Bagshot Heath. The Forest was
still unenclosed, but squatters had been steadily enlarging their pieces
of land by carrying forward their ditches at the time of scouring them,
while parishes within the boundaries had raised money by allowing
persons to enclose and acquire portions of the common land. In 1817
awards were given, settling the claims of various occupants, and the
Forest, or every tract of it which retained that title, was enclosed and
the deer driven into the Great Park. This is now eighteen hundred acres
in extent, and holds a thousand fallow deer and a hundred red deer,
Cranbourne Park holding a small herd of white deer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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