THE PKREGRINE FALCON. 95 



the management of the hawks, and of the people employed in this sport, but when he 

 had been very successful in it, the king was accustomed to rise up and receive him on 

 his entrance ; and even, on some occasions, to hold his stirrup. Ethelston made North 

 Wales provide him not only with so many dogs as he chose, " whose scent-pursuing noses 

 might explore the haunts and coverts of the deer," but " liirds who knew how to hunt 

 others along the sky." 



In France there was an officer called the " Grand Falconer," who was a person of so 

 much importance that his salary was four thousand florins, and he was attended by fifty 

 gentlemen and fifty assistant falconers. He was allowed to keep three hundred hawks ; 

 he licensed every vender of hawks m the kingdom ; and received a fee on every one of 

 these bu'ds that were sold. The king never rode out on any occasion of cdnsequence 

 without being attended by this officer. 



In England kings, knights, ladies, and all the most important of its personages were 

 long extremely fond of the pastime of hawking. Indeed there was no outdoor amuse- 

 ment in which " the fair " joined to so great an extent as in this. According to Froissart, 

 Edward III. had Avith him, when he invaded France, thirty falconers on horseback, who 

 had charge of his hawks, and every day he either hunted or hawked, as he was disposed. 

 The same monarch received a falcon as a present from the king of Scotland, and so highly 

 did he value the gift, that he awarded the falconer who brought it with a donation of 

 forty shillings. 



The foUowmg complaint was made by a wTiter of the fifteenth century : — 



" Into the church then comes another sotte, 

 Withouten devotion, setting up and down, 

 Or to be seene, and showe his garded cote ; 

 Another on his fiste a sparhawke or fawcone, 

 Or else a cokow ; wasting so his shone." 



In Henry VII.'s reign it was enacted, that if any one should take the eggs out of 

 a hawk or falcon's nest, he should sufler imprisonment for one year and a day, and be 

 liable to a fine at the king's pleasm-e ; one-half of wliich belonged to the crown, and the 

 other half to the owner of the gi-ound wherever the eggs were found ; and if a man 

 destroyed the eggs on liis own ground, he was equally subject to the penalty. Hem-y 

 VIII. pursumg his hawk on foot, at Hitchin, in Hertfordshire, attempted, with the 

 assistance of his pole, to jump over a ditch that was half-fuU of muddy water. The pole 

 broke, and the king fell with his head into the mud, where he would have been stifled, 

 had not a footman, who was at hand, leaped into the ditch and released the king from 

 his perilous situation. At the commencement of the seventeenth century a goshawk and 

 a tassel-hawk were sold for one hundred marks, a large sum m those days, but wliich 

 was not considered too large for birds, whose rearing required such extraordinary care, 

 time, and trouble, as that of a hawk. How complete the traming was, is evident from 

 the language of Izaak Walton : — " In the air, my noble, generous falcon ascends to such 

 a height as the dull eyes of beasts and fish are not able to reach to — their bodies are 

 too gross for such high elevation — but from which height I can make her descend by a 

 word from my mouth, which she both knows and obeys ; to accept of meat from my hand ; 

 to own me for her master ; to go home with me ; and be wiUing the next day to afford 

 me hke recreation." 



It was the practice of falconers to train the rapacious birds for seven different sorts of 

 sport : for the kite, the heron, the crow, the pie, the hare, for open fields and for rivei-s. 



