Stag Hunt in Peascod Street!

Published in Windlesora 20 (2003)

© WLHG

George III, like many of our monarchs, had a passion for hunting, and whenever there was a stag hunt Windsor’s inns filled up with horsemen eager for the chase. The stags pursued were not killed but, prized for their speed and stamina and with names like Highflyer and Starlight, preserved for another day. Nobody expected a hunt to come through town, however, until on 2 January 1781 one did just that, as recorded three days later in The Morning Herald:

A correspondent from Windsor informs us, that the inhabitants of the town were amused on Monday by an uncommon bustle, from the shouting of huntsmen to the cry of the hounds, blended with the music of several French horns. The people flocking to the doors and windows, were agreeably surprised with the spectacle of a stag running through the streets before Sir John Lade’s hounds. The chase was attended by many gentlemen, which, with the young Baronet’s suite dressed in orange-coloured liveries turned up with blue and trimmed with silver, had a most pleasing effect. This hunt is beyond comparison the best appointed in the kingdom. The stag had been turned out at Salt-hill, and had taken a circle of fifteen or twenty miles before it passed through this town. It ran down Prescot-street [sic], away to the forest, where it afforded excellent diversion, and was taken in the great park after having run a chase of between thirty and forty miles.

Sir John Lade was a 21-year-old companion of the Prince of Wales, a dashing but disreputable gambler, womaniser, and man of the turf. He had come into his inheritance the previous summer, at which time Dr Samuel Johnson addressed a poem to him suggesting that he would quickly run through his money. For a while he pursued Mary ‘Perdita’ Robinson who is buried in Old Windsor churchyard^*, but in 1787 he married Laetitia Darby, former doxy of a condemned highwayman known as Sixteen-String Jack. Lady Lade was notorious for her foul tongue, for which she was held in some awe by the future George IV.

Hester Davenport

^*See the article about her in Windlesora 15.