The plentiful supply of venison enabled Sir Charles to exercise his generosity to his friends, tenants, and neighbours to the full. Men of all creeds could eat of his venison with avidity and relish. But he was at variance with the cooks, and, considering that they did not do justice to the haunches he sent to his friends, he determined to ask the recipients, in many instances, within a radius of a dozen miles of Fawsley, to cook it there. To carry out his scheme he had an oven placed upon wheels and sent the venison to his friends, properly cooked, at any hour they chose to name.
Many anecdotes were told of Sir Charles Knightly. Here is one: A fat deer managed to escape from the park in the height of the season for killing, and it strayed to a field in Byfield Parish near Griffin Gorse, and was killed by Mr. Barnes’s men. It was properly dressed by a butcher and a venison feast was proposed to celebrate the harvest home.
On the following day Sir Charles’s keeper appeared on horseback with a venison basket on each side of the saddle, and demanded the buck. Mr. Barnes gave it up at once but asked the keeper to wait while he wrote a note. On the keeper’s return he met his master and handed him the note which ran as follows:-
Mr. Barns’s compliments to Sir Charles Knightly, and he begs to say that he had intended to put the deer to a proper purpose by giving a feast to the poor.
