102 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 



Commonalty of the city and their successors for ever, 

 " all the Site, Circuit, Compas, and Precinct of the late 

 Hospital of St. Gyles, wytliyn the Cytie of Norwych, in 

 the Paryshe of St. Elyn, nexte Bushhope Gate there, &c." 

 (Hist. Nor., 8vo., vol. ii., p. 390) ; since, indirectly, the 

 antiquity of this Swannery may be inferred from the 

 allusions of the same author, to local swan-rights and 

 marks. 



NORFOLK SWAN MASKS. 



In his chronicle of events in this city, for the year 

 1482, Blomefield remarks (vol. i., 8vo., p. 170) : — 



" This year [22 Edw. IV. c. 6.] was the statute of qualification 

 for swan-marks made, by which it was enacted, that no person what- 

 ever, except the King's son, should have any swan-mark or game of- 

 swans of his own, or any other to his use, except he hath freehold 

 lands and tenements to the clear yearly value of five marks,* and all 

 persons not so qualified shall, before Michaelmas next, sell or give 

 away such marks and game of swans to such people as are qualified, 

 and after that time, any person qualified may seize such game 

 undisposed of, and he shall have half and the King the other half; 

 upon which statute an account of all the swan-marks in this 

 county was taken and entered in a roll, which was renewed in the 

 year 1598, wheri the order for Swans was printed; the citxj being 

 then seized, according to the swan-rolls, of three swan-marks belong- 

 ing to the late dissolved Hospital of St. Giles." 



* Some idea of the number of tame swans kept prior to that date 

 in this country may be formed from the fact that the famous bill 

 of fare at the " intronization" of George Novell, Archbishop of 

 York, in 1464 — only eighteen years before the passing of this 

 Act, and in the reign of the same Monarch — included /om?- hundred 

 swans, with a like abundance of all kinds of provision. It 

 appears, moreover, from the preamble to this statute that this law 

 was passed owing to the frequent robbery of cygnets by unprin- 

 cipled swan-keepers, who placed their own marks upon them to 

 avoid detection. Nor was such robbery confined in those days to 

 the lower orders, as, in the "Paston Letters" (Fenn's Ed., 1789, 

 Letter xxiv.), we find Sir John Falstolf, in the twenty-ninth year 

 of the reign of Henry VI. (only thirty-two years before the passing 



