or CHACE, is 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. The following history of the English chase is given by Mr Pennant (British Zool. i. 42): "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 sus- ceptible 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 indivi- duals 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the throne, this passion for the chase was carried to an excess which involved every civil right in a general ruin: it superseded the consideration of religion even in a superstitious age; the village communities, nay, even the most sacred edifices, were turned into one vast waste, to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 law- less 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 Eng- lish were always fond of. They were very jealous of any encroachment on their respective bounds, which were often the cause of deadly feuds. Such a one gave cause to the fatal battle of Chery-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 Otterburne.

"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 diver- sion. For this reason the subjects of a despotic govern- ment 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 dear kind to parks, of which Eng- land 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 Chastellet possessed about that time of thirteen parks."