MUTE SWAN. 213 



Fourth, 1483, it was ordered that no person, other than 

 the king's sons, should have a swan-mark, or game of 

 swans, who did not possess a freehold of the clear yearly 

 value of five marks. 



Sometimes, though rarely, the crown, instead of granting 

 a swan-mark, confers the still greater privilege of enjoying 

 the prerogative right (within a certain district) of seizing 

 White Swans not marked. Thus the Abbot of Abbotsbury, 

 in Dorsetshire, had a game of Swans in the estuary formed 

 by the the Isle of Portland and the Chesil Bank. The 

 swannery at Abbotsbury is the largest in the kingdom, and 

 is an object of considerable attraction and interest to those 

 who visit that part of the south coast, and has been before 

 referred to : it is now vested in the Earl of Ilchester, to 

 whose ancestor it was granted on the dissolution of the 

 monasteries. 



In the eleventh year of the reign of Henry the Seventh, 

 1496, it was ordered that stealing, or taking a Swan's egg 

 should have a year's imprisonment, and make fine at the 

 king's will. Stealing, setting nets or snares for, or driving 

 Grey or White Swans, was punished still more severely. 



The king had formerly a swanherd, (Magister deductus 

 cygnorum,) not only on the Thames, but in several other 

 parts of the kingdom. We find persons exercising the 

 office of " Master of the King's Swans," sometimes called 

 the swanship, within the counties of Huntingdon, Cam- 

 bridge, Northampton, and Lincoln. Richard Cecil, the 

 father of Lord Burleigh, was bailiff of Whittlesey Mere, 

 and had the custody of the Swans in the time of Henry 

 the Eighth. Anciently the crown had an extensive swan- 

 nery annexed to the royal palace or manor of Clarendon 

 in Wiltshire. It had also a swannery in the Isle of 

 Purbeck. 



