The family of Chetwode who owned the manor of that name in Buckinghamshire is saod to have possessed the right of taking every year, between 29 October and 7 November, a toll in respect of all cattle passing along the drift roads within the townships of Prebend End, Gawcott, Lenborough, Bourton, Preston-cum-Cowley, Hillesden, Tingewick, Barton, CHetwode.
Still exercised in the 19th century, this was known as the Rhyne Toll. According to George Lipscomb, writing in 1847, this was said to have been granted to one of the Chetwode family for having killed a ‘terrible beast’ (a wild boar) in Chetwode Woods that had been annoying the whole neighborhood.
In Records of Buckinghamshire (1858), a contributor notes that the jaw of this animal was still in possession of Sir J.N.L. Chetwode and had been exhibited the year before at the annual meeting of the Buckinghamshire Architectural and Archaeological Society. Henry Bett says in English Legends (1950) that one of the fields at Chetwode ‘is still’ called Boar’s Head Field, and, according to report, when a mound on the spot was dug up in 1810, the skeleton of an immense boar was found.
Whether these were remains of the boar in the story may be questioned: landowners’ rights and privileges were often said to be the reward for slaying some local monster, and that these claims are not necessarily true is quite common.