198 REMINISCENCES OP A SPOETSMAN. 



A sparrow-liawk or merliu was generally carried by 

 ladies of rank, as a falcon was in times of peace the 

 constant attendant of a knight or baron. Grodcroft re- 

 lates that when Mary of Lorraine was regent, she pressed 

 the Earl of Angus to admit a royal garrison into his 

 castle of Tantallon. To this he returned no direct an- 

 swer ; but as if apostrophising a goshawk which sat on 

 his wrist, and which he was feeding during the queen's 

 speech, he exclaimed, " The devil's in this greedy glede ; 

 she will never be full!" Barclay complains of the com- 

 mon but indecent practice of bringing hawks and hounds 

 into churches. Indeed, the hawking mania of these 

 times had no bounds ; thus Frederigo, the hero of Boc- 

 caccio's ninth novel, although he had spent all his 

 substance refused to part with his favourite hawk ; and 

 when his mistress is importuned by his son to beg it of 

 him, she replies, " How can I offer to take away from a 

 gentleman all the pleasure he has in life?" Strutt intro- 

 duces some prints of ladies going hawking ; and further 

 observes on the subject : " The ladies not only ac- 

 companied the gentlemen in this diversion, but often 

 practised it by themselv^es; and if we may believe a 

 contemporary writer of the thirteenth century, they 

 even excelled the men in knowledge and exercise of 

 the art of falconry. The jioet Spenser, in praising 

 Sir Tristam for his skill in hawking, says : 



" Nor is there hawk which mantleth on her perch, 

 Whether high tow'ring or aceoasting low, 

 But I the measure of her flight doe search, 

 And all her prey and all her diet know." 



In Bishop Earle's character of a proud knight, it is also 

 said, " A hawk is esteemed the true burden of nobility. 



