or CHACE, in Law, is used for a driving of cattle to or from any place; as to a distress, or sortlet, &c.

or Chace, is also a place of retreat for deer and wild beasts; of a middle kind between a forest and a park, being usually less than a forest, and not possessed of so many privileges; but wanting e.g., courts of attachment, swainmote, and justice seat.

Yet it is of a large extent, and stocked both with a greater diversity of wild beasts or game, and more keepers, than a park. Crompton observes, that a forest cannot be in the hands of a subject; but it forthwith loses its name, and becomes a chase; in regard all those courts lose their nature when they come into the hands of a subject; and that none but a king can make a lord chief justice in eyre of the forest. See JUSTICE in Eyre.

The following history of the English chase is given by Mr Pennant. "At first the beasts of chase had this whole island for their range; they knew no other limits than the ocean, nor confessed any particular master. When the Saxons had established themselves in the heptarchy, they were reserved by each sovereign for his own particular diversion. Hunting and war, in those uncivilized ages, were the only employ of the great; their active, but uncultivated minds, being susceptible of no pleasures but those of a violent kind, such as gave exercise to their bodies, and prevented the pain of thinking.

"But as the Saxon kings only appropriated those lands to the use of forests which were unoccupied, so no individuals received any injury; but when the Conquest had settled the Norman line on the throne, this passion for the chase was carried to an excess, which involved every civil right in a general ruin: it superseded the consideration of religion even in a superstitious age: the village communities, nay even the most sacred edifices, were turned into one vast waste, to make room for animals, the objects of a lawless tyrant's pleasure. The New forest in Hampshire is too trite an instance to be dwelt on; sanguinary laws were enacted to preserve the game; and in the reigns of William Rufus, and Henry I., it was less criminal to destroy one of the human species than a beast of chase. Thus it continued while the Norman line filled the throne; but when the Saxon line was restored under Henry II., the rigour of the forest laws was immediately softened.

"When our barons began to form a power, they claimed a vast, but more limited, tract for a diversion that the English were always fond of. They were very jealous of any encroachments on their respective bounds, which were often the cause of deadly feuds; such a one gave cause to the fatal battle of Chevy-chase; a fact which, though recorded only in a ballad, may, from what we know of the manners of the times, be founded on truth; not that it was attended with all the circumstances which the author of that natural but heroic composition has given it: for on that day neither a Percy nor a Douglas fell: here the poet seems to have claimed his privilege, and mixed with this fray some of the events of the battle of Otterbourne.

"When property became happily more divided by the relaxation of the feudal tenures, those extensive hunting grounds became more limited; and as tillage and husbandry increased, the beasts of chase were obliged to give way to others more useful to the community. The vast tracts of land, before dedicated to hunting, were then contracted; and, in proportion as the useful arts gained ground, either lost their original destination, or gave rise to the invention of parks. Liberty and the arts seem coeval; for when once the latter got footing, the former protected the labours of the industrious from being ruined by the licentious sportsman, or being devoured by the objects of his diversion: for this reason, the subjects of a despotic government still experience the inconveniences of vast wastes and forests, the terrors of the neighbouring husbandmen; while in our well regulated monarchy very few chases remain. The English still indulge themselves in the pleasures of hunting; but confine the deer kind to parks, of which England boasts of more than any other kingdom in Europe. The laws allow every man his pleasure; but confine them in such bounds as to prevent them from being injurious to the meanest of the community. Before the Reformation, the prelates seem to have guarded sufficiently against this want of amusement; the see of Norwich, in particular, being possessed, about that time, of thirteen parks."

in the sea language, is to pursue a ship; which is also called giving chase.

Stern-CHASE, is when the chaser follows the chased astern directly upon the same point of the compass.

To lie with a ship's fore-foot in a CHASE, is to sail and meet with her by the nearest distance; and so to cross her in her way, or to come across her fore-foot.

A ship is said to have a good chase, when she is so built forward on, or a stern, that she can carry many guns to shoot forwards or backwards; according to which she is said to have a good forward or good stern chase.