178 REMINISCENCES OF A SPORTSMAN. 



duties of his office. The citizens of London were 

 permitted to hunt and hawk in certain districts, Fitz- 

 stephen, who wrote in the reign of Henry II. says " the 

 Londoners delight themselves with hawks and hounds." 

 The common hunt of the citizens is ridiculed in an old 

 ballad, published in D'Urfey's collection, one stanza of 

 which runs thus : — 



" My Lord Mayor takes a staff in hand, to beat the bushes o'er, 

 I must confess it was a work he ne'er had done before ; 

 A creature bounceth fi'om a bush, which made them all to laugh, 

 My lord, he cried, ' A hare, a hare !' but it proved an Essex calf." 



Field sports lost nothing of their relish in more modern 

 times. Sir Thomas More, who wrote in the time of 

 Henry VIIL, describing the state of manhood, makes a 

 young gallant to say : 



" Manhood I am, therefore I me deliglit. 

 To himt and hawke, to nourish up and fade 

 The greyhounds to the course, the hawk to th' flight, 

 » And to bestryde a good and lusty stede." 



Hawking was performed on horseback or on foot, as 

 occasion required. On horseback when in the fields or 

 open country, and on foot when in the woods and covers. 

 In following the hawk on foot, it was usual for the 

 sportsman to have a stout pole to assist him in leaping 

 over little rivulets and ditches which might otherwise 

 prevent him in his progress. And this we learn from 

 an historical fact, related by Hall, who informs us that 

 Henry VIIL pursuing his hawk on foot at Hitchen, in 

 Hertfordshire, attempted with his pole to jump over a 

 ditch that was half full of muddy water ; the pole broke, 

 and the king fell with his head into the mud, where he 

 would have been stifled had not a footman named John 



