him continued to keep the hounds.

Even before the Conquest, the moor had been a royal hunting-ground.
Deeds show that in the reign of Edward the Confessor there were at least
three Royal Foresters; and William I, says Mr Rawle, 'probably reserved
to himself the forest rights, for the Conqueror, according to the Saxon
Chronicle, "loved the tall deer as though he had been their father," and
would scarcely be likely to forgo any privileges concerning the vert and
venison.' Various tenures show that later Kings kept Exmoor as a
preserve. Walter Aungevin held land in Auri and Hole (near South Molton)
under Edward III, 'by sergeantry that whensoever our lord the King
should hunt in the forest of Exmoor, he should find for him two barbed
arrows.' And Morinus de la Barr, farther to the west, near Braunton,
held his land on the same tenure with the addition of finding 'one
salmon.'

Nearly thirty years later in the same reign, a very curious tenure is
registered. 'Walter Barun held certain lands and tenements in the town
of Holicote, of the King in capite, by the service of hanging upon a
certain forked piece of wood the red deer that die of the murrain in the
King's forest of Exmoor; and also of lodging and entertaining the poor
strangers, weakened by infirmities, that came to him, at his own proper
costs, for the souls of the ancestors of our Lord King Edward.'

The Forest of Exmoor was part of the jointure of several Queens of
England. Henry VIII settled it on Catherine of Aragon, and it was
afterwards held by Jane Seymour. James I gave it to his Queen, but
Charles I had other views, and announced his intention of drawing 'the
unnecessary Forests and Waste Lands' [Dartmoor and Exmoor] 'to
improvement.' Needless to say, the scheme died in its early stages, and
when Charles II came to the throne, he granted a lease of the forest to
the Marquis of Ormonde.

Besides the wild-deer on Exmoor, there are, as everyone knows, creatures
almost as wild--herds of Exmoor ponies. Very few now are pure 'Exmoors,'
except those belonging to Sir Thomas Acland. Among these ponies the true
breed has been carefully preserved, and there has been no crossing. It
seems a little odd to think of Exmoor ponies being mentioned in
Domesday, but Mr Chanter quotes an entry referring to the stock in the
parishes of Lynton and Countisbury, '72 brood mares, probably the Exmoor
ponies running half wild on the moor; in Brendon, 104 wild mares (_equas
indomi