Name Index

To

Records of stag-hunting on Exmoor

London : Chapman and Hall, (1887) 286 pp.

by

Sir J.W. Fortescue

Prepared by Michael Steer

The author was a highly respected historian of the British Army and served as Royal Librarian and Archivist at Windsor Castle from 1905-26. He was born in Madeira, the 5th son of Hugh, 3rd Earl Fortescue by his wife Georgina, Countess Fortescue). His family owned much of the area around Simonsbath on Exmoor since the twelfth century, thus he joined the North Devon Yeomanry Cavalry latterly serving as a major. Fortescue was educated at Harrow and Trinity College, later lecturing at Oxford (DLitt Oxon). The deer of Exmoor have been hunted since Norman times, when Exmoor was declared a Royal Forest. The earliest actual record of a pack of staghounds on Exmoor was 1598. In 1803 the "North Devon Staghounds" became a subscription pack. In 1824/5 30 couples of hounds, the last of the true staghounds, were sold to a baron in Germany. Today, the Devon and Somerset is one of three staghounds packs in the UK, the others being the Quantock Staghounds and the Tiverton Staghounds. All packs hunt within Devon and Somerset. This rare and much sought-after book was produced digitally by Google from a copy in the Tufts University Library collection and can be downloaded from HathiTrust. Google has sponsored the digitisation of books from several libraries. These books, on which copyright has expired, are available for free educational and research use, both as individual books and as full collections to aid researchers..