180 GRUIB^. 



the entij : "It is thought that Cranj^s muste he hadcle at 

 Crystynmas and other principall feestes for my Lordes owne 

 Mees, so they he hoght at xvjcZ. a pece," equivalent to ahout 

 eight shillings of our money. In the Norfolk ' Household 

 Book ' of the L'Estranges of Hunstanton, already quoted 

 (p. 95), there are five references to Cranes, and hy one of 

 these, in 1533, "the xxvjth weeke [after the 29th March, 

 i.e. about September 26th], the price paid appears to have 

 been only v]V7. Later, in the same year, occurs the ominous 

 record : " The xxxviijth weke, Tewysdaye, Itm. a Cranue 

 kylld wt. the gan." By Dugdale's Origines Juridiciales, 

 we learn that by 1555 the price charged for a Crane at a 

 banquet in the Inner Temple Hall in October, had already 

 risen to xs., the same as for a Swan or Bustard, Previous 

 to this date, by an Act passed in 1534, the taking of eggs 

 of the Crane and of the Bustard had been prohibited under 

 the same maximum penalty of 20d. for every egg ; showing 

 that although becoming scarcer than in former times. 

 Cranes were still numbered amongst birds which bred in 

 this country ; principally, no doubt, in the marshes of the 

 Eastern counties. It was, probably, of that district that 

 Dr. William Turner, who although a Northumbrian by 

 birth, lived nearly fifteen years at Cambridge, wrote, " Apud 

 Anglos etinm nidulantur grues in locis palustribus, et earum 

 pipiones srcpissime vidi, quod quidam extra Angliam nati, 

 falsum esse contendunt." * Half a century later, Dr. Thomas 

 Muffet, of Bui bridge, near Wilton, Wiltshire, who died in 

 1590, confirms the statement that the Crane still bred in 

 the fens.f 



Drayton, describing Lincolnshire, says: 



" There stalks the stately Crane, as though he marcheJ in ■waiTe."+ 



* Avium Historia, Colonia?, 1544. 



+ " Health's Improvement : or, Rules comprising and discovering the Nature, 

 Method and Manner of Preparing all Sorts of Focd used in this Nation. 

 Corrected and enlarged by Christopher Bennet, Ph.D., 1655." The learned 

 Doctor considers "the flesh [of the Crane] distinctly unfit for sound men's tables, 

 and much more unmeet for them that be sick ; yet being young, killed with a 

 Goshawk, and hanged two or three dales by the heels, eaten with hot galentine, 

 and drowned in Sack, it is permitted unto indifferent stomachs." 



X " Poly-olbion," 25th Song, line 9.3 (1622). 



I 



