2-914-037 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Stag-hunting in the Reign of George II. - from a painting by Frederick Tayler, 1854. 'The stout, plump, coarse-bred horses; the huge hunting-horns; the yeoman pricker, with the slow lyme hounds in couples, with which he has marked down the stag for the swifter pack to "force" down - all speak of the age of slow, stately, scientific hunting, which was carried on in this country under the forms, and with the terms of our Norman conquerors, until the progress of agriculture thinned our forests and exterminated the great herds of deer, which, down to the middle of the eighteenth century, were to be found in all wild and wooded districts between Enfield-chase and their last refuge, Exmoor...If we may venture to guess, our Artist had Sir Roger de Coverley with the fair widow in his mind...It is evidently not a Royal or noble hunt, but the establishment of well-estated country squires'. From "Illustrated London News", 1854.