1891.] on HcnvJcs and Hawhing. 359 



their doings in the hawking field, but a few examples only must 

 sufiice. 



In October 1172, Henry II. was at Pembroke en route for Ireland, 

 and there amused himself with hawking. Oq one occasion (says 

 Giraldus Cambrensis) he saw a wild falcon perched upon a crag, and 

 had a mind to try a flight at it with a large Norway hawk which he 

 carried. The wild falcon, however, having mounted above the king's 

 bird, stooped at it, and struck it down, to the king's great vexation. 

 He, however, recognised the excellence of the Pembrokeshire Pere- 

 grines, and from that time, according to the chronicler, he used to 

 send every year, at the proper season, for young falcons from the 

 cliffs of South Wales. 



Richard Coeur-de-Lion, while in the Holy Land, used to amuse 

 himself with hawking at Jaffa, in the plain of Sharon. 



King John used to send to Ireland for his hawks ; amongst other 

 places to Carrickfergus, co. Antrim, and was especially fond of a 

 flight at the crane with gerfalcons. It appears, by entries in the 

 Court Rolls of payments of the expenses of the journeys, that he 

 took cranes with his hawks in Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire, Dorset, 

 and Somerset. 



In the wardrobe accounts of Edward I., preserved in the British 

 Museum (Add. MSS., No. 7965, Ed. I., 1297-8), is an entry of a 

 payment of a reward to the king's falconer, for presenting three 

 cranes taken with gerfalcons in Cambridgeshire. 



These entries serve not only to illustrate the history of hawking 

 in England, but are interesting as proving the former existence of 

 the crane in this country in sufficient numbers to be flown at when 

 required. 



Henry VIII. 's love of hawking is well known from the anecdote 

 related of him in Hall's Chronicle, to the effect that being one day 

 out hawking at Hitchin, in Hertfordshire, he was leaping a dyke 

 with a hawking pole, when it suddenly broke, and the kin^: was 

 immersed in mud and water, and might have lost his life had not 

 Edmund Moody, one of the falconers, immediately come to his 

 assistance, and dragged him out. 



[A portrait of Robert Cheseman, Falconer to Henry YIIL, from 

 the painting by Holbein at the Hague, hangs upon the screen.] 



During the reign of Elizabeth hawking was much in vogue, and 

 we have here a portrait of her Grand Falconer, Sir Ralph Sadler, 

 reproduced from an old panel portrait by Gerhardt, which hangs in 

 the Manor House at Everley, Wilts, the former residence of Henry 

 Sadler, the third son of Sir Ralph. This Sir Ralph Sadler was an 

 important personage. He was Chief Secretary of State to Henry 

 VIII., and afterwards to Queen Elizabeth, who made him her Grand 

 Falconer, and gave him the manor, park, and warren of Everley, 

 Wilts, on the attainder of the previous owner, the Duke of Somerset. 

 He had charge of Mary Queen of Scots, when imprisoned in the 

 Castle of Tutbury (1584-5), and got into trouble for taking her out 



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