GAME LAWS. 351 
death of a hare,” says our author, “was a hanging matter, the 
murder of a plover a capital crime. Death was inflicted on 
those who spread nets for pigeons; wretches who had drawn 
a bow upon a stag were to be tied to the animal alive; and 
among the seigniors it was a standing excuse for having killed 
game on forbidden ground, that they aimed at aserf.” The 
feudal lords enforced these codes with unrelenting rigor, and 
not unfrequently took the law into their own hands. In the 
time of Louis 1X., according to William of Nangis, “ three 
noble children, born in Flanders, who were sojourning at the 
abbey of St. Nicholas in the Wood, to learn the speech of 
France, went out into the forest of the abbey, with their bows 
and iron-headed arrows, to disport them in shooting hares, 
chased the game, which they had started in the wood of the 
abbey, into the forest of Enguerrand, lord of Coucy, and were 
taken by the sergeants which kept the wood. When the fell 
and pitiless Sir Enguerrand knew this, he had the children 
straightway hanged without any manner of trial.” * The mat- 
ter being brought to the notice of good King Louis, Sir En- 
guerrand was summoned to appear, and, finally, after many 
feudal shifts and dilatory pleas, brought to trial before Louis 
himself and a special council. Notwithstanding the opposition 
of the other seigniors, who, it is needless to say, spared no 
efforts to save a peer, probably not a greater criminal than 
themselves, the king was much inclined to inflict the punish- 
ment of death on the proud baron. “If he believed,” said he, 
“that our Lord would be as well content with hanging as with 
pardoning, he would hang Sir Enguerrand in spite of all his 
barons;” but noble and clerical interests unfortunately pre- 
vailed. ‘The king was persuaded to inflict a milder retribution, 
and the murderer was condemned to pay ten thousand livres in 
coin, and to “build for the souls of the three children two 
* It is painful to add that a similar outrage was perpetrated a very few 
years ago, in one of the European states, by a prince of a family now de- 
throned, Jn this case, however, the prince killed the trespasser with his own 
hand, his sergeants refusing to execute his mandate. 
