OF HAWKS AND HAWKING IN ESSEX 

 IN THE OLDEN TIME.* 



By J. E. HARTING, F.L.S., F.Z.S. (Member of the British Ornithologists' Union). 



MANY lands in Essex, as in other parts of England, were held 

 of old by the serjeanty of keeping hawks or finding hounds 

 for the king, when he should come that way upon a hunting tour, 

 or for the use of the lord of the manor, as the case might be. 



At Tey Magna, the tenants of the manor were formerly bound 

 to maintain a number of hawks for the lord's use till they were a 

 year old, a service which was afterwards comnmted into an annual 

 payment of thirty shillings, which in 1782 was paid to, and received 

 by, Thomas Astle, Esq. 



At Saling, in Edward the First's time, Ralph Picot held land by 

 the serjeanty of keeping a Sparhawk (Sperverium) for the king, and 

 mewing it at his own proper cost. 



At Ardeley, Baldwin Tillot held certain land in the town by a 

 similar tenure, per serjant. servandi nisuin. 



At Hallingbury, Walter de Hauville held land by the serjeanty 

 of falconry, which he had of the grant of King Richard I. 



In 1304, Cicely, the widow of Humfrey de Hastings, held the 

 manor of White Roding by the service of keeping two lanner falcons 

 for heron-hawking, and a greyhound trained to make a heron rise, 

 from Michaelmas to the Purification, for the king's use (Morant's 

 Essex, vol. ii. p. 469). 



At White Withings, Thomas de Longville and Beatrice, his wife 

 (daughter and heir of Philip de Hastings), kept two of the king's 

 lanners for the same period of the year, that is, from September to 

 February (Blount's Ancient Temires, 4th Ed., 181 5, p. 277). 



When James I, who was a great sportsman, journeyed from 

 London to hunt and hawk at Newmarket, he used to go by way of 

 Waltham Cross and Royston, and the Exchequer accounts show the 

 great expenses which were incurred in these journeys. In 1624, for 



* These remarks are extracted, by permission, from an interesting paper by Mr. Harting 

 read before a meeting of the Essex Field Club, held by invitation of Mr. Philip Colley, at 

 Writtle Park, Chelmsford, on May nth, 1889, and since printed in the Essex Naturalist (50. iii. ) 



