28 THE ADVENTURES 



Angling, too, was scarcely a sport ; fly-fishing 

 was unknown ; and though, from the same mi- 

 nutes of the Household Book, we find record of 

 Henry VIII.'s gratitude to a certain James Tylson, 

 to whom he " paide in rewarde for two angelyng 

 rodds that he brought to the King's Grace to 

 Hampton Co'te, Xs. ;" yet we find, from another 

 entry, that his Grace cared so little about the 

 sport himself, that he paid five shillings " to cer- 

 tayne men that fished afore the King's Grace as 

 he went on hawking" In fact, though angling 

 was not unknown in those days, it was scarcely 

 recognised as a sport ; and if the peasant, with 

 his rude home-made tackle, occasionally secured 

 a prize in a full-grown fish, it was as one in a 

 thousand ; while the young fry were not, as now, 

 the constant prey of the amateur fly -fishers, that 

 are for ever whipping our streams. 



The rude style of angling as late as the 14th 

 and 15th centuries, maybe gathered from old 

 prints and pictures of that period. The annexed 

 illustration is a fac-simile of a woodcut taken 

 from a tract printed by Wynkyn de Worde, 

 at Westminster, in 1496, small folio, entitled, 

 "The Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle." 

 This book is a republication of a work known 

 to the curious as the "Book of St. Albans," 

 printed there in 1486, and written by Dame 



