We see by our text (p. 65) that it was usual to course foxes with greyhounds, and although the passages referring to this are translated from G. de F. we know from many old records that this fox-coursing was as usual in England at this time as in France.
In the earlier days hounds used for the chase of the fox one day, probably hunted hare, or even buck or stag, on another—such as the harriers, which, if we can believe Dr. Caius, were entered to any animal from stag to stoat (see Appendix: Harriers). The first real pack of foxhounds is said to be the one established by Thomas Fownes, Esq., of Stepleton, in Dorsetshire (1730). They were purchased at an immense price by Mr. Bowes, of Yorkshire. A very amusing description is given in "Cranbourne Chase" of the first day's hunting with them in their new country. There must have been several packs entered to fox only about the end of the eighteenth century, for an erstwhile Master of the Cheshire Foxhounds had in his possession a horn with the following inscription: "Thomas Boothby Esqre. Tooley Park Leicester. With this horn he hunted the first pack of foxhounds then in England 5 years: born in 1677 died 1752." This pack, which was purchased by "the great Mr. Meynell" in 1782, had been hunted both in Hampshire and in Wiltshire previously by the ancestors of Lord Arundel (Bad. Lib., "Hunting," p. 29).
the tree a stag has rubbed his antlers or frayed against.
By the fraying-post the huntsman used to be able to judge if the stag he wished to harbour was a warrantable stag or not. The greater the fraying-post the larger the deer (Stuart, vol. ii. p. 551).
"not find his fues," not to find his line of flight, his scent; Gaston says: "Ne puissent deffaire ses esteurses": literally, "cannot unravel his turnings."
Fues, flight, fuite, track. Gaston calls these sometimes voyes. Voyes was written later Foyes (Fouilloux).
Fue. "Se mettre a la fue" (var. fuie), (to take flight) (Borman, p. 89).
glade. The original sense is a smooth, bare place, or perhaps a bright, clear place in a wood.
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).
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 youe at thys tyme but ... more ovr I entende to kepe my gresse tyme in yat countre, where fore I wolle yat no mane huntte tylle I have bene ther."