ANCIENT ANGLING AUTHORS 9 



the dame Julyans Bernes has been credited with the 

 authorship of the whole work, and is inferred to have 

 been a certain Juliana Berners, a daughter of Sir 

 James Berners, who was beheaded on Tower-hill in 

 1388 ; and she is further supposed, though upon what 

 evidence is not clear, to have been the Abbess or 

 Prioress of Sopwell Nunnery in Hertfordshire. 



The following weighty arguments against this 

 theory are given in the article on Caxton in Dr 

 Andrew Kippis' Biographia Britannica (2nd ed., 1784, 

 p. 364 note) : 



But the next most famous book that was printed 

 at St Albans, and, it seems, with Caxton's letter, is 

 all we shall here take notice of, as the off-spring in 

 these early times of that press ; and it is the rather 

 not to be omitted, because of divers mistakes that 

 have been made, concerning both it, and its author. 

 This book treats of Hunting, Hawking, and Heraldry ; 

 and is ascribed to an illustrious and heroic Lady, of 

 great gifts in body and mind ; a second Minerva in 

 her studies, and another Diana in her diversions ; in 

 short, an ingenious Virago, as Bale and Pits call her, 

 who lived about 1460, and yet she was no less than 

 an Abbess, as Sir Henry Chauncy, or Prioress, as 

 Dr Middleton stiles her, of the strict and mortified 

 Nunnery at Sopwell in Hertfordshire ; who says also, 

 that she was sister to Richard Lord Berners of 

 Essex. But that the said Juliana Barnes was such 

 a religious Lady and so nobly descended, no author, 

 as yet, has attempted to prove. As for the book in 

 question, it has been sometimes called The Gentle- 

 man 's Recreation, and The Gentleman's Academy, or 

 book of St Albans. But of the original edition now 

 before us, there is a colophon comprehending the 



