204 EEMINISCENCES OF A SPORTSMAN. 



second parliament held after her accession to the throne 

 passed an act which recites that, " Whereas her Majesty, 

 as also the noblemen, gentlemen, and divers other per- 

 sons, of great dominions and possessions, had breeding 

 within their woods and grounds divers eyries of hawks 

 of sundry kinds, to their great pleasure and commodity, 

 that if hereafter any person shall unlawfully take any 

 hawk's or other eggs out of the woods or grounds of any 

 persons, and be thereof convicted at the assizes, on in- 

 dictment, bill, or information at the suit of the king or 

 of the party, he shall be imprisoned for three months."' 

 The last statute, which limits the time of hawking at 

 pheasants and partridges, was promulgated in the 23rd 

 Elizabeth, and it is gratifying to remark that it savours 

 of an improvement in the spirit of the times. By this 

 " no person was allowed to hawk on another man's corn, 

 till it was carried, under pain of paying forty shillings, 

 or being imprisoned a month." In Tuberville's treatise 

 on falconry is a representation of Elizabeth on horse- 

 back on a hawking expedition. James I., after the 

 fashion of those days, was, while yet a boy, portrayed 

 with a small hawk on his hand, but his chief field 

 amusement was hunting with stag hounds. In his book 

 of advice to his son Henry Prince of Wales, after re- 

 commending strongly hunting and hounds, and other 

 manly exercises, he adds : " As for hawking I condemn 

 it not ; but I must praise it most sparingly, because it 

 neither resembleth the warres so near as hunting doeth, 

 in making a man bardie and skillful rider in all grounds, 

 and is more uncertain and subject to mischance, and 

 which is the worst of all, is an extreme stirrer up of 

 the passions." 



The decline of hawking appears to have taken place 



