330 anatidj:.. 



before his accession to the tliroue used the silver swan ; 

 afterwards the fire-beacon appears to have been his cogni- 

 sance. Over his tomb in Westminster Abbey is a represen- 

 tation of an antelope and a swan, chained to a beacon. — 

 Montagu's Heraldry. 



In the twenty-second year of the reign of Edward IV. 

 (1483), it was ordered that no person, except the king's 

 sons, should have a swan-mark, or 'game ' of swans, unless he 

 possessed a freehold of the clear yearly value of five marks. 



Sometimes, though rarely, the crown, instead of granting 

 a swan-mark, conferred the greater privilege of enjoying 

 the prerogative right (within a certain district) of seizing 

 White Swans not marked. Thus the Abbot of Abbotsbury, 

 in Dorsetshire, had a 'game' of swans in the estuary formed 

 by the Isle of Portland and the Chesil Bank. 



In the eleventh year of the reign of Henry VII. (1496), 

 it was ordered that stealing or taking a Swan's egg should 

 have a year's imprisonment, and make fine at the king's 

 will. Stealing, setting nets or snares for, or driving Grey 

 or White Swans, was punished still more severely. 



The king had formerly a swauherd {Mayister deductus 

 cygnorum), not only on the Thames, but in several other 

 parts of the kingdom. We find persons exercising the office 

 of " Master of the King's Swans," sometimes called the 

 swanship, within the counties of Huntingdon, Cambridge, 

 Northampton, and Lincoln. Richard Cecil, the father of 

 Lord Burleigh, was bailifi' of Whittlesey Mere, and had the 

 custody of the Swans in the time of Henry VIII. Anciently 

 the crown had an extensive swannery annexed to the royal 

 palace or manor of Clarendon in Wiltshire. It had also a 

 swannery in the Isle of Purbeck. 



In the ' Archneologia,' published by the Society of Anti- 

 quaries of London, vol. xvi. 1812, ordinances respecting 

 Swans on the river Witham, Lincolnshire, together with an 

 original roll of ninety-seven swan-marks appertaining to the 

 proprietors on the said stream, were communicated by the 

 late Sir Joseph Banks. A true copy of the Parchment Roll 

 being too long, only the following particulars are here inserted. 



