24 MANUAL FOR YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 



to prey on their kindred species. In these exercises, after 

 hearing divine service in the morning, he employed him- 

 self whole days. " * 



Up to this time it would appear that game laws, such 

 as they were, had been enacted only with reference to the 

 maintenance of the liberties of all persons, the conservation 

 of good order and decorum, and the prevention of viola- 

 tions of the Sabbath ; not as yet with any bias to the pre- 

 servation of game, much less to interference with the natu- 

 ral rights of classes. 



With the Norman conquest, however, while the passion 

 for the chase received a vast farther impetus ; while as a 

 science, under the gentle terms of venerie and woodcraft, 

 it was materially advanced ; while in its appliances of all 

 sorts, imported Andalusian coursers, partaking largely of 

 the desert blood, which has since rendered the English 

 horse so famous, imported hounds from Pomerania, Al- 

 bania, Germany, imported falcons from Norway, Iceland, 

 and the Hebrides, it was carried forward to a systematic 

 completeness unheard of before, it was fenced in, as a royal 

 and aristocratic privilege, with forest laws so cruel, so 

 arbitrary and so stringent, as rendered the life of a red-deer, 

 or even the egg of a swan, a heron, a bittern, or a long- 

 winged hawk, more valuable than the blood of a low-born 

 man ; and finally it drove a large proportion of the rural, 

 Saxon populace, into outlawry and direct rebellion, under 

 chiefs who have acquired immortality, like Robin Hood 

 and his merrymen, through the medium of those contem- 



* William of Malmesbury's Chronicle of the Kings of England. 

 Book II. Chap. 13, p. 247, Bonn's edition. 



