ment it
is easy to take a ride of twenty-five miles without more than a couple
of miles off the turf. In 1607 the Great Park was stated at 3650
acres: it consists now of about one thousand acres less.

The principal royal park in modern days, next to Windsor, is Richmond.
This covers more than two thousand acres, and, thanks to the railway,
may almost be regarded as a lung of London, being only eight miles
distant from the city. Richmond Park is as replete as Windsor with
historical association, and came into especial importance in the reign
of Charles I. That king, who was excessively addicted to the sports of
the field, had a strong desire to make a great park, for red as well
as fallow deer, between Richmond and Hampton Court, where he had large
wastes of his own, and great parcels of wood, which made it very fit
for the use he designed it for; but as some parishes had rights of
commonage in the wastes, and many gentlemen and farmers had good
houses and farms intermingled with them which they had inherited or
held on lease, and as, without including all these, the park would not
be large enough for Charles's satisfaction, the king, who was willing
to pay a very high price, expected people to gratify him by parting
with their property. Many did so, but--like the blacksmith of Brighton
who utterly refused to be bought out when George IV. was building his
hideous pavilion, and the famous miller of Potsdam, that Mordecai at
the gate of Sans Souci--"a gentleman who had the best estate, with a
convenient house and gardens, would by no means part with it, and made
a great noise as if the king would take away men's estates at his own
pleasure." The case of this gentleman and his many minor adherents
soon caused a regular row. The lord treasurer, Juxon, bishop of
London, who accompanied Charles to the scaffold, and other ministers
were very averse to the scheme, not only on account of the hostile
feeling it had evoked, but because the purchase of the land and making
a brick wall of ten miles around it, which was what the king wanted,
was a great deal too costly for his depleted exchequer. However,
Charles, with his usual fatal obstinacy, would not hear of abandoning
the scheme, and told Lord Cottington, who did his utmost to dissuade
him from it, "he was resolved to go through with it, and had already
caused brick to be burned and much of the wall to be built." This
beginning of the wall before people consented to part with t