HAWKIXG IX EXGLAXD. 203 



colour, but afterwards of a much lighter colour, with a 

 very considerable tinge of blue. The falcon gentle, 

 when she becomes what is called a white hawk, is a 

 very beautiful bird.* 



In Ireland, like^\^se, hawking was much and warmly 

 protected, where, as early as 1481, it was enacted that 

 '■ Whatsoever merchant should carry a hawk out of Ire- 

 land shall pay for a goshawk 13s. 4d., for a tercel 6s. Sd., 

 for a falcon 10s., and the poundage upon the same price ; 

 and the person who bringeth any such hawk to the king 

 shall have a reasonable reward of the king, or else the 

 same hawk or hawks for his laboiur." The accession of the 

 Tudors was equally marked with the love of hawking. 

 Henry VII. pati'onised it both by precept and practice, 

 and, as I have already stated, Henry VIII. nearly lost 

 his life when engaged in this field sjaort. In the 

 twenty-seventh year of the reign of Henry VIII. this 

 king issued a proclamation reciting his great desire to 

 preserve the partridges, pheasants, and herons from his 

 palace of Westminster to St. Giles's-in-the-Fields, and 

 from thence to Islington, Hampstead, Highgate, and 

 Hornsey Park, and that if any person presume to kill 

 any of these birds they were to be imprisoned, and also 

 to suffer such other punishment as his Serene Highness 

 shoidd deem meet. In this reign also it became com- 

 mon to import hawks and herons from other countries, 

 which paid fixed duties on being landed. Queen Eliza- 

 beth was also a practical patroness of falconry. The 



* Towards the close of the eighteenth century, Lord Oxf(5rd and Colonel 

 Thornton did all in their po-sver to rerive hawking in England, and for 

 this ohject they introduced the Dutch system of falconrj- : but this 

 Dutch school of falconry never extended into Scotland, which always had 

 its own native falconers. 



P 2 



