In the 11th year of Edward III. (1336), John Lord Roos, of Hamlake, had a charter granted to him, by the King, of free warren in lands in Nottinghamshire and Oxfordshire, and also to hunt the fox, wolf, hare, and cat, throughout the King’s forest of Nottinghamshire. [294c]
In the 33rd year of Edward III. (1358), Vitalis Engaine died, seized of part of the lordships of Laxton and Pichesse, in Northamptonshire, held by petit serjeanty, to hunt the wolf whensoever the King should command. [294d]
In the 41st year of Edward III. (1366), Thomas de Engaine, Lord of Blatherwic, died, seized of lands, meadows, and rent, in Pightesse, in Northamptonshire, held by the service of “finding, at his own proper costs, certain dogs, for the destruction of wolves, foxes, martrons [marten cats], cats [wild cats], and other vermine,” within the counties of Northampton, Rutland, Oxford, Essex, and Buckingham. [295a]
Of course it is not pretended, that upon the deaths of any of the before-mentioned personages, who died seized of lands, held by the tenure of hunting or destroying wolves, such a tenure is conclusive evidence that those animals existed at the times of the deaths of those personages respectively, because it may have happened that the lands may have descended from father to son, several times, after the dates of the original royal grants or charters creating such tenures; still, even in that case, enough has been shown to prove that they were not extinct until centuries after the time of King Edgar. Besides which, it must not be forgotten, that the charter before mentioned, of the 11th year of Edward III. (1836), to John Lord Roos, of Hamlake, then gave him a license to hunt the wolf in the King’s Forest of Nottinghamshire, &c., which would have been useless if there had not then been any such animal to hunt. We therefore have some evidence that wolves existed in England in the fourteenth century; but it is very probable that they had been destroyed in the more populous and cultivated counties, although for more than a century longer they might continue to be occasionally met with, in the wild and thinly peopled parts of England, especially in the northern counties.
In the fifteenth century they probably became scarce.
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.