xvi INTRODUCTION 



This has been going on for more than a century ; 

 for it was the learned, but by no means always 

 accurate, Joseph Strutt who first thrust upon the 

 world, in his often quoted '* Sports and Pastimes 

 of the English People," certain misleading blunders 

 concerning our work and its author. Blaine, 

 coming next, adding thereto, was followed little 

 more than a decade later by *' Cecil," author of 

 an equally much quoted book, " Records of the 

 Chase." In it, when speaking of the " Master of 

 Game," he says that he has " no doubt that it is 

 the production of Edmund de Langley," thus 

 ascribing it to the father instead of to the son. 

 Following "Cecil's" untrustworthy lead, Jesse, 

 Lord Wilton, Vero Shaw, Dalziel, Wynn, the 

 author of the chapter on old hunting in the Bad- 

 minton Library volume on Hunting, and many 

 other writers copied blindly these mistakes. 



Five years ago the present editors published in a 

 large folio volume the first edition of the " Master 

 of Game" in a limited and expensive form. It 

 contained side by side with the ancient text a 

 modernised version, extended biographical ac- 

 counts of Edward of York and of Gaston de 

 Foix (both personalities of singular historical and 

 human interest), a detailed bibliography of the 

 existing mediaeval hunting literature up to the end 

 of the sixteenth century, a glossary, and a very 

 much longer appendix than it was possible to insert 



