HISTORICAL NOTES 77 



species, and is only known as a rare 

 visitor. 



While pheasants may not have been 

 always so much thought of as birds of 

 chase, they were at all times considered a 

 great delicacy on the table, especially 

 when killed by a hawk after a violent 

 flight, which was supposed to make their 

 flesh more ' short, tender, and disposed to 

 corruption.' 



The chronicler tells us that on the last 

 night of his hfe, 29th Dec. 1170, the 

 great prelate Thomas-a-Becket dined off 

 a pheasant 'more heartily and cheerfully 

 than usual ' ; the cook of King Richard 

 II. certainly served his pheasants some- 

 what barbarously, boiling them with 

 curlews for the royal table, but they were 

 generally better treated in the kitchens of 

 the great, and must have formed a pleasant 

 contrast in the banqueting hall to the 

 doubtful fare of swans and herons on 

 which our ancestors used to regale them- 

 selves. 



At a later date Suckling in his sonnets 



