The dean, having received the messengers, took special care that the
knowledge of their arrival should be kept, if possible, from the ears
and eyes of Adam de Dutton, who happened for several days at that season
to be hunting in the forest, where a mighty slaughter of game--wolves,
bears, and such like--was the result; in which dangerous pastime,
Geoffery, the dean's only son, acted a distinguished part. This bold
adventurer was accounted the most skilful hunter in the whole range of
these vast forests, where the venison was so strictly kept that the life
of a man was held in but little estimation, comparatively, with the care
and preservation of a beast.
The Deans of Whalley, as we have before seen, were mighty hunters in
those days; and a wild and picturesque story is told in Dugdale's _Mon.
Angl._. v. i., to which we have before alluded--to wit, that the
great-grandfather of the present incumbent, Liwlphus Cutwolph, cut off a
wolf's tail whilst hunting, from which he acquired this surname.
Geoffery inherited a more than ordinary passion for the chase. With his
bow and hunting-spear he had been known to spend many days in these deep
and trackless recesses, where the feet of man rarely trod, and the wild
roe and the eagle had their almost inaccessible haunts.
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