SPORT ANCIENT AND MODERN 



was called in to arbitrate between Edmund 

 Thornton, prior of the cell of St. Bees, and 

 Christopher Sandes in a dispute about falcons 

 in lez berghe, a place near St. Bees noted for 

 its breed of falcons. 1 Raughton near Dalston 

 was a celebrated eyry in the twelfth century, 

 as St. Bees was in the sixteenth. In the 

 Testa de Nevtll there are eight references to 

 hawks' eyries in Cumberland, and six of these 

 refer to Ration, Rauton, or Rauftone. ' The 

 vill of Ration is a serjeanty to keep the 

 hawks' eyries (erias accipitruni) of the lord 

 the King, and is worth loos, a year.'* 



Hunting in Cumberland, both of deer, fox 

 and hare, is of great antiquity ; nearly 700 

 years ago (1215) King John wrote to Robert 

 de Ros commanding him to licence William 

 de Ireby to have dogs and greyhounds for 

 hunting the fox and the hare in the forest 

 of Carlisle. 3 Henry III. in 1231 granted 

 licence to the Bishop of Carlisle that he or 

 his men might follow beasts of the chase 

 from his forest of Dalston into the king's 

 forest, and kill them there if necessary, and 

 to return with the venison without any 

 molestation to his servants or his dogs from 

 the king's foresters. 4 In 1276 Edward I. 

 gave licence to Robert de Ros to hunt with 

 his own hounds the fox in the king's lands 

 of Holderness till Pentecost, but he was not 

 to take the king's larger game nor hunt in 

 other men's warrens. 6 



Ten or fifteen years ago, scattered over the 

 country side, were many ' hunters ' of the old 

 school, mines of information about everything 

 connected with hounds and vermin ; a good 

 many lived in the Whitehaven district, notable 

 amongst whom were old Joe Irwin and ' Dr ' 

 Longmire ; what these two and their like did 

 not know about foxes and otters and grey- 

 hounds, and especially about ' foumats,' was 

 hardly worth knowing ; they were of a race 

 of mighty hunters, and there was something 

 heroic in the fashion in which they followed 

 the chase. Nothing but pure love of sport 

 made such men as these sportsmen ; they had 

 no fine horses to ride, no audience before 



i Reg. of St. Bees (Harl. MS. 434), ff. 88, 1 8 ib. 

 The abbot of St. Mary's, York, ordered that two 

 falcons and a tersel be sent from St. Bees to secre- 

 tary Crumwell in 1534. As none could take 

 them ' braunchers,' he caused them to be taken 

 as nigh flying as possible. The best eyrie at St. 

 Bees at that time was on the land of Roger Sandes 

 (Letters and Papers of Henry VIII. vols. vii. 832, 

 liii. pt. i. 1325). 



* i. 420. 



Close Rolls, John, Rec. Com. i. 187. 



* Charter Roll, i 5 Hen. III. 



5 Close Roll, 4 Edw. I. m. 13. 



whom to perform brave deeds ; they went 

 where the hunt led them, their wet clothes, 

 reeking like kilns, dried on them at nights, 

 as with rum and tobacco and never-ending 

 ' cracks ' mainly about the particular creature 

 they had been pursuing, they sat by the 

 kitchen fire of that house which happened 

 to be nearest to them when darkness stopped 

 them ; at the earliest sign of dawn they were 

 afoot again. The otter hunter was a fox 

 hunter, and a foumart hunter as well, when 

 opportunity served, and sometimes a cock- 

 fighter, but the last-named was often a cock- 

 fighter only ; physical strength and complete 

 indifference to weather were not indispensable 

 to him, though after the act came into force 

 which made his favourite pursuit an illegal 

 one a knowledge of the country and the 

 ability to use his legs well were sometimes 

 useful accomplishments. 



The palmy days of cockfighting have long 

 passed away ; the law which allows infinitely 

 more cruel sports has laid a heavy hand on 

 that one ' sporting ' occupation, which was 

 thoroughly enjoyed by all who took part in 

 it, both animal and bird. Yet still in some 

 parts of Cumberland, at the end of a solitary 

 occupation road leading nowhere, or in a 

 quiet corner of the fells, a man taking a walk 

 on a Sunday afternoon may come upon a 

 patch of turf where not many hours before 

 a small crowd had gathered, and see by certain 

 infallible signs how hard it is for a custom 

 which has been ingrained into people for 

 generations altogether to die out. 



We do not know when puntshooting was 

 first introduced into Cumberland, or indeed 

 into England. Nicholas Cox, the fourth 

 edition of whose book was published in 1697, 

 mentions nothing larger than a 'fowling piece' 

 with a barrel five and a half or six feet long, 

 and ' an indifferent bore under Harquebus.' 8 



It is to Colonel Peter Hawker, who was 

 born in 1786 and died in 1853, tnat ever y 

 modern wildfowler owes a deep debt of grati- 

 tude, for he made a science of punt-shooting, 

 and his Instructions to Young Sportsmen 7 may 

 be read as a handbook now. No one can 

 write upon that subject and not draw upon 

 the famous book, and every gunner on our 

 coast is indebted to him for some detail in 

 his gun or its fittings or in the lines of his 

 punt. Colonel Hawker only once visited 

 Cumberland, but it is interesting to compare 



* The Gentleman's Recreation, in Four Parts, 

 ' Fowling ' (London, 1697), p. 13. Out of some 

 450 pages, Cox devotes only three or four to the 

 gun. 



7 1st cd. 1814 ; nth, 1859. 



421 



