Richmond Park was a royal deer park whose enclosure turned a landscape of customary use into contested private space. Under Robert Walpole, walls, traps, and restrictions on local grazing, hunting, and firewood gathering intensified hostility; the park became a flashpoint in the conflict between powerful landowners and the people known as the Blacks, and later a setting for a prosecution that exposed limits on elite power.

From Common Land to Enclosure

Charles I created Richmond Park out of common land, where local residents had traditionally grazed animals, hunted hares and rabbits, and gathered firewood. Those customary rights were curtailed when the park was enclosed, but enforcement initially remained lax: grazing and hunting continued despite the formal loss of access.

Walpole, who had an interest in the park, changed that balance. After arranging for his son to become park ranger, he had the park closed off, a new wall built, and man traps installed. He enjoyed hunting deer and built himself a lodge at Houghton within the park. These changes made enclosure tangible: a boundary that had once been weakly enforced became a barrier backed by traps and the authority of influential landowners.

Conflict and Resistance

The new restrictions helped ignite the hostility of local Blacks. Their resistance was not confined to Richmond Park: the estates of other notable landowners and politicians were also raided. But the park’s walls and traps gave the conflict a local focus, pitting customary access to land against an elite preserve for deer hunting.

The violence surrounding these disputes drew a severe response from the Whig government. In May 1723, Parliament passed the Black Act, creating fifty new capital offenses. Carrying weapons and even blackening one’s face became crimes punishable by hanging. The statute gave the government a broad instrument of repression against the Blacks, while the struggle over parks and customary rights formed part of the circumstances in which it was used.

The Huntridge Trial

On November 10, 1724, local resident John Huntridge, who lived outside Richmond Park, was accused of aiding deer stealers and assisting known Blacks. Both charges could carry the death penalty. The prosecution was initiated by the Regency Council of the Lords Justices, dominated by Walpole and Earl Cadogan; Walpole personally sought evidence of Huntridge’s guilt from an informant, Richard Blackburn.

Despite the power behind the case, Huntridge was acquitted after a trial lasting eight or nine hours. The jury found procedural irregularities in the collection of evidence, and those defects helped prevent a conviction that the prosecution might otherwise have expected. Huntridge’s case thus connected the park’s enclosure and the conflict over deer to a test of how far political influence could direct criminal justice.

Legal Limits and Historical Significance

The acquittal was striking because Huntridge’s jurors were major landowners and members of the gentry, not merely his social peers; they might have been expected to sympathize with Walpole. Yet they did not simply deliver the result sought by the powerful men behind the prosecution. The contrast was with an earlier political order in which the Court of Star Chamber could act openly as an instrument of Stuart repression and kings could remove judges whose decisions displeased them.

Huntridge’s success was exceptional, not representative of every defendant. Other Blacks and their sympathizers were acquitted or had their sentences commuted, but many were hanged or transported to North America. The Black Act remained on the statute books until 1824. Richmond Park’s history therefore brings together enclosure, popular resistance, and unequal punishment, while its courtroom aftermath illustrates a growing principle: even a government backed by powerful landowners had to contend with legal procedure and the rule that no one stood above the law.