258 COOKERY OF DUCKS AND GEESE 



serfs, or yeomen, like the manna or the quails that 

 fell in the wilderness. Except for cruel penalties on 

 trespass, they were not under the forest laws. They 

 were netted in the estuaries and snared in the swamps. 

 The vast woodlands which stretched from the Channel 

 to the Cheviots were interspersed with lakes and 

 meres, and flooded by innumerable rivers and stream- 

 lets. The fenland, in special, was a prolific breeding- 

 ground, where the home birds were reinforced by hosts 

 of migrants. When Hereward the Wake established 

 himself there in the Camp of Refuge, the hospitable 

 Abbot of Ely would have been hard put to it, when 

 he sheltered a crowd of noble refugees, had he 

 not eked out the commons with fishes, eels, and 

 wild-fowl. It is said, indeed, that in happier times 

 the monks of the fens stretched a point, and served 

 the birds of the waterland on Fridays and fasts, in 

 the faith that they were as much fish as fowl. Since 

 then drainage and reclamation have made melancholy 

 changes. The greylag geese, which were wont to 

 breed freely, have ceased to nest there, and the ruffs 

 and reeves, which used to swarm, have become 

 ornithological rarities. A glance at the menu of the 

 Archbishop Neville's splendid installation banquet 

 at York gives some notion of the numbers of wild- 

 fowl in the North in 1467. There were 40,000 of 



