animals for hunting.

A recent French newspaper gave notice of an association for the purpose of
enabling persons of all ranks to enjoy the pleasures of the chase. A park
of great extent is to be taken on lease near Paris; its extent is about
six thousand acres, partly arable, and partly forest ground. The plan is,
to open it to subscribers during six months--viz. from September 1 to
March 1, an ample stock of game being secured in preserves.

Why were parks and inclosures usually attached to priories?

Because they were receptacles of game for the clergy of rank, who at all
times had the privilege of hunting in their own possessions. At the time
of the Reformation, the see of Norwich only was in the possession of no
less than thirteen parks, well stocked with deer and other animals for the
chase.--_Spelman._

The eagerness of the clergy for hunting is described as irrepressible.
Prohibitions of councils produced little effect. In some instances a
particular monastery obtained a dispensation. Thus, that of St. Denis, in
774, represented to Charlemagne that the flesh of hunted animals was
salutary for sick monks, and that their skins would serve to bind books in
the library. Alexander III., by a letter to the clergy of Berkshire,
dispenses with their keeping the archdeacon in dogs and hawks during his
visitation.--_Rymer._ An archbishop of York, in 1321, carried a train of
two hundred persons, who were maintained at the expense of the abbeys on
his road, and who hunted with a pack of hounds from parish to
parish!--_Whitaker's Hist. of Craven_, quoted in _Hallam's Hist. Middle
Ages_.