Note 115a — NOTES ON PARISHES ROUND HORNCASTLE. (continued 3)

In those days the wild boar, as well as deer, were plentiful in our forests, and were protected by royal statute. The punishment for anyone killing a boar, without the King’s licence, was the loss of his eyes. They became extinct about A.D., 1620; as to the deer, an old Patent Roll (13, Richard II., pt. 1, m. 3), mentions that a toll of one half penny was leviable on every “100 skins of roebuck, foxes, hares, &c.,” brought for sale to the Horncastle market. This would look as though roe-deer at least, were then fairly plentiful.