HOUNDS AND HUNTING 61 



the different townships within the forest to be rated at a certain 

 sum, in proportion to the number of their carts, for way-leave 

 during the prohibited period. In the stricter forests all passage 

 for carts, etc., was absolutely forbidden to all outsiders in this 

 month. 



A toll of 4^. for every cart or wagon, and a id. for every 

 packhorse crossing over Harnham Bridge, near Salisbury, 

 into Cranborne Chase, was paid as a check upon travelling 

 during the fence month, as late as the early part of last century. 

 This toll was collected by virtue of a warrant from Lord Rivers, 

 and during the month a pair of deer's antlers were fixed on the 

 bridge as a warning to travellers. 



HUNTING TREATISES. Twici's Le Art de Venerie, written in 

 Norman-French, is the oldest book on hunting in England. 

 William Twici was huntsman to Edward II., and wrote 

 this short treatise, circa 1325, at the end of the reign. There 

 is a record on the Close Rolls of July, 1322, of Twici being 

 sent by the king to the forests of Lancaster to take fat 

 venison, with a lardener, two berners, four ventrers, a page, 

 twenty greyhounds, and forty harthounds ; the sheriff was to 

 pay Twici 7\d. a day for his own wages, 2d. a day to each of 

 the berners and ventrers, id. a day to the page, and \d. a day 

 for each of the hounds. From a later Close Roll entry we find 

 that William Twici died, as a royal pensioner, in the abbey of 

 Reading in the spring of 1328. It may therefore fairly be 

 assumed that he wrote his short treatise when in retirement at 

 Reading towards the close of his life. 



An early English version of this tract, wherein the name of 

 John Gyfford is associated with Twici, is among the British 

 Museum MSS. (Cott. MSS. Vesp. B. xii.). This was privately 

 printed by the late Sir Henry Dryden, Bart., in 1843, with 

 introduction, notes, and illustrations, making a book of eighty 

 pages. 



The Master of Game, written between 1406 and 1413 by one of 

 Edward III.'s grandsons, Edward, the second Duke of York, is 

 a translation from the French of the celebrated hunting-book 

 Livre de Chasse. The author of this French treatise was Count 

 Gaston de Foix, who began to write it on ist May, 1387. Of 

 the thirty-six chapters of The Master of Game, only the last 

 three, and a paragraph at the opening of the first chapter or 



