Sport And Sportsmen Of The New Forest

By C. R. Acton

Originally published in the early 1930s. The illustrated contents contain chapters on: History of the New Forest Referring Chiefly to Sport - Folklore - Traditions - Superstitions - Fox Hunting - Otter Hunting - Shooting - Badger Digging - The Buckhounds - Hare Hunting - The Modern Forest etc. Many of the earliest sporting books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Home Farm Books are republishing many of these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Nov 29, 2012
• ISBN: 9781447483267

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AUTHOR’S PREFACE

IT is a curious fact that few people, comparatively speaking, realise that there is, tucked away in a corner of Hampshire, a wild, old-fashioned piece of country, where the sport obtainable is still, to a certain degree, as old-fashioned as its surroundings.

Still more curious is the fact that, having arrived in the New Forest, many fail to find the real Forest.

That the old-world atmosphere still exists I have tried to prove in this book, and have endeavoured to penetrate the modern veneer that arrests the attention of many visitors and which deters them from discovering the old, old Forest, as it really is.

In these days of mechanisation and general speeding up, it is good for a sportsman to know of a place where hound-work is still hound-work, where one can shoot without being forced into the competition for a record bag, and, if so desirous, one can ramble on for hours without meeting a soul, in a solitary commune with Nature.

All these attractions the New Forest gives one, but it is essential to discover where the Forest can be reached, whom to meet in it, and how to find its inner meaning.

A lover of the New Forest was the late Lord Darling, who, most kindly, wrote the Foreword for this book; it was, indeed, one of his last kindnesses before his lamented death.

For some years Lord Darling lived at Ladycross, near Beaulieu; he enjoyed, greatly, the sporting side of Forest life, and his children and his grandchildren have carried on the tradition of sportsmanship in its highest form.

I also make my acknowledgments to Sir George Meyrick, Master of the Foxhounds, for reading the book in proof, and for making one or two suggestions, and I will take this opportunity, too, to thank him for many, many, happy days of good, old-fashioned Foxhunting, enjoyed by both my wife and myself through his long mastership, the end of which, I hope, is not yet in sight.

To the Editor of Horse and Hound I express my gratitude for allowing me to reproduce in this book as Forest Cameos two descriptions that have appeared above my nom de plume in that journal: Off the Beaten Tracks and A Day from Alder-moor.

Then, too, I should like to thank my old friend Mr. O. T. Price, that ultra-keen Forest hunting man who has been Master of both the Buckhounds and the Beagles, and who has hunted with the Foxhounds almost as long as anyone can remember; and Mr. E. L. Wingrove, the doyen of Hunt Secretaries, who filled that difficult and honorary post for over thirty years; both these gentlemen have given me the kindest assistance, as has Miss Daisy Timson with information about the New Forest gypsies, with which attractive way-farers every member of the Timson family has always been persona grata from time immemorial.

Time immemorial, the words suit the Forest. Though change, perforce, makes ugly play with some externals of this playground of Nature, the heart of it remains the same. The Forest is still—the Forest. For ever may it be so!

C.R.A.

August, 1936.

CHAPTER ONE

HISTORICAL, THOUGH REFERRING CHIEFLY TO SPORT

IT was whilst holding court at Southampton that King Canute discovered that, though, in later years, Britannia was to rule the waves, yet not even a king might hope to govern the tides. Close to Southampton stretched the wooded and wild expanses of Ytene, a name that for some years had covered the forest that had served many a king or thane as a hunting ground, but, so far, had not been dignified by the title Royal. Under William I this deficiency was rectified, Ytene was brought under the Forest Laws and became one of the Royal Forests, which it has remained ever since.

The murder of William Rufus has given a vaguely Royal and vaguely tragic background to the place, a dull red aura, as it were, but, since Norman times, very few kings have even visited the Forest; still fewer have used it as it was intended to be used, as a Royal Hunting ground.

Well stocked with boar, red-deer and fallow, the Forest was hunted by great noblemen, and the Game Laws excluded from the chase all those who did not enjoy Royal warrant for free warren. The dukes and barons who served either as Rangers of the Forest, or who enjoyed the Hunting rights, enforced these laws with all their attendant cruelty.

Poaching in the New Forest was an offence punishable by mutilation or hanging until, in the Charta de Forestae of Henry III comes the pronouncement henceforth no man shall lose life or member for taking our deer. But even after that dispensation of the King’s mercy much brutality remained—some to humans, some to animals. Amongst the latter came the barbarous law that no dweller in the Forest might keep a dog large enough, or fast enough, to chase deer. To ensure lack of size and speed, there was a stirrup kept in the Verderers’ Hall at the King’s House at Lyndhurst; dogs had to pass through it, if they could manage to squeeze through then they were small dogs suitable only to guard house and chattels, if they could not, then they were expeditated, that is, they had their three front toes cut off with an axe, thereby ensuring that they were not fast enough to chase deer with any hope of catching them. However, as is usual with our legal system, it was possible even in those days to drive the equivalent of a coach and four through it, and it is comforting for us, who are fond of dogs, to reflect that owners of the larger animals might, by dint of taking a vow to restrain their dogs from chasing deer, and by payment of a sum of money, avoid this cruel mutilation. But still, the principle of the thing shows us that the Forest was maintained, and intended, for sport, and sport for the aristocracy only.

Of the creatures that provided their sport, the boar and red-deer were indigenous to this country; the fallow deer and pheasant were introduced by the Romans, and the fighting-cock by the Phœnicians. The fox, in earliest days, was vermin, and counted not in the roll of creatures of chase, of hunting, or of combat.

In the reign of Edward II, his huntsman, Guillaume Twici, divided the quarry into Beasts for Hunting, i.e. Hare, Hart, Wolf, Wild Boar, and Beasts for the Chase, i.e. Buck, Doe, Fox, Marten and Roe, but the chief branch of sport was stag-hunting, and it remained in its position of ascendancy for ages.

Apart from William I, William II, Henry II and Edward I, our earlier monarchs put in little of their activities in the New Forest. William I loved the tall deer as if he were their father, an affection that did not prevent his taking their life any more than John Jorrocks refrained from killing the foxes whose red coats he so admired; William II’s death whilst hunting gave him almost his only claim to fame; Henry II was a great cock-fighter; whilst Edward I spent a considerable portion of his reign at Lyndhurst. It was not until the reign of Charles II that the New Forest again became in any sense a hunting ground of Royalty. The Merry Monarch had a house at Boldrewood, a crumbling garden-wall is all that is left of the Royal residence. But what scenes must have been enacted there! Freed from the restraint of the regicidal rule, the country gave itself to gaiety, and no portion of the population more so than the Court!

The name of King Charles II is, perhaps, most inseparably connected with Newmarket. Certainly Racing increased in popularity by leaps and bounds under the enjoyment of his Royal Countenance. It was in the reign of Charles II that Jockeys first wore sashes of distinguishing colours, though racing jackets did not come into being until Hanoverian times. At Newmarket, too, the King indulged in Hawking, and in his great passion—Cock-fighting. But, whilst the story of Royal sport and Royal love-making embellished the romantic story of the Palace at Newmarket, much sport, and love-making too, went on at Boldrewood. King Charles improved the herds of Forest deer by means of infusions of fresh blood from France. Passages and causeways were built throughout the Forest to secure His Majesty riding over the boggs and moors, one causeway, near Matley, is still known as The King’s Passage. The King’s game-cocks were bred at Boldrewood, though they chiefly fought at Newmarket, the erstwhile Royal cock-pit in the racing metropolis being now the car-park near the Rutland.

The New Forest survived the disafforestation and the selling of Forest rights that took place during the Stuart reigns, and, as a result, many of the nobility turned their eyes in the direction of Hampshire, seeing there a noble hunting ground still standing, whilst many another Forest, both Royal and otherwise, had vanished. The Stuart period, then, marks, not only the renewed association of Royalty with the Forest, but also the temporary settling-down of members of the aristocracy within its confines.

In succeeding years we find some of the nobility hunting packs of hounds in the Forest, the Dukes of Bolton and Richmond, and Lords De La Warr and Eglinton figuring in the list; also, the Squires were given Lordship over their respective parishes, and were granted permission to purchase their land from the Crown; the squirearchical manors in the Forest that still remain are those of the Lovells of Hincheslea, the Meyricks of Hinton Admiral, the Comptons of Minstead, and the Morants of Brockenhurst; the ducal and lordly names referred to above have now no connection with the Forest, their owners being, relatively speaking, birds of passage, but the Squires yet remain.

This transition continued during the early Hanoverian reigns, the Forest was becoming more and more a little world of itself, steeped in traditions, feudal in its respect of the older families, a world of sport—but, of unorganised sport. The local Squire took forth his hounds with no one to say him nay. The local Squire’s friends shot the King’s deer, no voice was raised in protest.

By this time the fashion of hunting the fox had even percolated through to the New Forest, so that there were local and unauthorised packs of deerhounds—hunting both red and fallow—foxhounds and harriers. Naturally, the interests of some of these led to a clash. Perhaps the following outstanding dates may be taken as illustrative of the gradual growth of cosmos out of chaos.

The first records of any kind of Fox-hunting in the New Forest took the form of the following entries in the accounts of the Church Wardens of Eling:—

The Lord Duke, in the above, was the Duke of Richmond. Sir John Mill and Sir Richard Mill were members of a great sporting family, that of Barker-Mill, who owned much property round Mottisfont, and who possess the privilege of having their crest on the Bar Gate at Southampton.

The Mr. Cromwell was Richard Cromwell, son of Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector; Tumble down Dick, as the Royalists irreverently nick-named him, lived at Romsey.

The references to Sir William Gooreing, who lay at Lyndhurst, and to Lord Sandis and Sir John Coventry, point out that various gentlemen were in the habit of visiting the Forest for hunting expeditions in those days, there being no recognised pack of Foxhounds.

Another point of interest that arises is that the Forest hunting boundaries then overlapped what is now the Hursley Hunt. This last country is now more addicted to shooting, and the Golden Era of the Hursley was about the time of Sir Robert Peel, when Mr. R. D. Cockburn, nephew of the great Minister, was M.F.H.

During this period a great character with the Hursley, Hambledon and New Forest Hunts was Parson Lukin, of Nursling, the maternal grandfather of Mr. E. L. Wingrove, who, for many years, was Secretary of the N.F.H.

Parson Lukin was a light weight and was noted for his yellow leather breeches. He used to soliloquise to himself aloud on the subject of scent. During the mastership of Mr. Nicholl, in the New Forest, Parson Lukin used to ride a grey horse that kicked. The Parson would stand up in the stirrups and lay tight hold of his mane, so that he never unshipped him. He was a fine rider and a great dandy, and incidentally, was married four times.

When he wanted his hair cut he went into his stables, turned a bucket upside down, sat upon it, and called to his groom to get a basin, put it on his head, and trim his hair short!

The Hursley’s greatest huntsman was Summers, who, as I write these lines, is an inmate of