I. Of the Earl of Surrey's solitary Ramble in the Home Park--Of the Vision
beheld by him in the Haunted Dell--And of his Meeting with Morgan
Fenwolf, the Keeper, beneath Herne's Oak.


In the twentieth year of the reign of the right high and puissant King
Henry the Eighth, namely, in 1529, on the 21st of April, and on one of
the loveliest evenings that ever fell on the loveliest district in England,
a fair youth, having somewhat the appearance of a page, was leaning
over the terrace wall on the north side of Windsor Castle, and gazing at
the magnificent scene before him. On his right stretched the broad
green expanse forming the Home Park, studded with noble trees,
chiefly consisting of ancient oaks, of which England had already learnt
to be proud, thorns as old or older than the oaks, wide-spreading
beeches, tall elms, and hollies. The disposition of these trees was
picturesque and beautiful in the extreme. Here, at the end of a
sweeping vista, and in the midst of an open space covered with the
greenest sward, stood a mighty broad-armed oak, beneath whose
ample boughs, though as yet almost destitute of foliage, while the sod
beneath them could scarcely boast a head of fern, couched a herd of
deer. There lay a thicket of thorns skirting a sand-bank, burrowed by
rabbits, on this hand grew a dense and Druid-like grove, into whose
intricacies the slanting sunbeams pierced; on that extended a long
glade, formed by a natural avenue of oaks, across which, at intervals,
deer were passing. Nor were human figures wanting to give life and
interest to the scene. Adown the glade came two keepers of the forest,
having each a couple of buckhounds with them in leash, whose baying
sounded cheerily amid the woods. Nearer the castle, and bending their