A HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND 



where the woods are adapted for them 

 such varieties of real game as wild turkeys 

 and capercailzie add to the interest of shoot- 

 ing, but bantams and guineafowl seem hardly 

 worthy of good sportsmen. 



It is unnecessary to do more than mention 

 the effect that a higher class of farming has 

 had on shooting. It was the scantiness of the 

 cover which first forced men to drive and 

 walk up partridges, for, especially where they 

 were numerous, except in turnips, they soon 

 ceased to lie to dogs. The sickle was used 

 all over the country till the ' sixties ' ; now 

 the reaping machine makes the stubbles 

 almost as bare as a lawn. In many places 

 the great wide straggling fences which were 

 famous places for nesting in, and where birds 

 sat well late on in the season, have been done 

 away with, often wire has taken their place, 

 and those that are left are kept much more 

 carefully trimmed. Rooks must either have 

 increased, or have educated themselves into 

 bad habits, for it seems certain that they do 

 more harm to eggs than they used to do, per- 

 haps because of this want of cover. 1 And, 

 especially near the coast, gulls also are much 

 more destructive, and there are many com- 

 plaints of the havoc they cause amongst very 

 young partridges and pheasants. Sir Richard 

 Graham in a note on Netherby refers to these 

 detrimental causes. 



Through the courtesy of their editors a 

 careful search has been made through the 

 early files of the oldest newspapers in the 

 county, the Cumberland Pacquet^ the Carlisle 

 Journal and the Carlisle Patriot. A hundred 

 and twenty years ago little public interest 

 seems to have been taken in snooting. The 

 Pacquet during the six years 17749 has not 

 a single reference to it. After this date the 

 notices became more numerous and para- 

 graphs relating to big and early and curiously 

 marked woodcocks, and solitary snipe, warn- 

 ings about trespassers, arrivals of sportsmen 

 and their bags on the first days of grouse and 

 partridge shooting, frequently occur. There 

 are long warnings to men inclined to poach ; 

 dire examples held out of the fate of those 



1 Mr. Hartley (of Armathwaite Hall) suggests 

 that the increase dates from the introduction of the 

 rook rifle. Owners of rookeries are now often in- 

 clined to reserve the shooting for themselves, since 

 there is certainly more sport in killing the birds 

 with a rifle than with a gun. But if owing to 

 weather, or any other cause, the ' big ' days have to 

 be postponed, a great many rooks cease to be 

 'sitters' and escape the bullet. Formerly the 

 ' crow shutting ' was handed over to the tenants 

 and neighbours who took good care to keep the 

 numbers down. 



432 



breaking the law. Indeed he must have 

 possessed a considerable amount of courage 

 who went in unlawful pursuit of game at the 

 beginning of last century by day, and especially 

 by night. The penalty for killing game out 

 of season was ^5 for each bird. In 1803 

 the Carlisle Journal shows what was likely to 

 befall any one caught night poaching ; the 

 hapless wight was to be deemed a rogue and 

 a vagabond, whipped and imprisoned for the 

 first offence, and transported for the second. 

 An old friend of the writer once announced 

 that he had taken a small bit of rough ground 

 to shoot over, and on our asking why he gave 

 good money for worthless land, he replied : 

 ' There's nowte on't, I ken there's nowte on't ; 

 but I gang til't through Mr. P.'s moss and 

 cum back fra't through Mr. L.'s, an' I'se nut 

 dune sae badly, efter a'.' What would this 

 worthy, a man respected by most of the 

 neighbours who were not in any way con- 

 cerned in the preservation of game, have said 

 if justice such as this was meted out to him- 

 self? 



In 1814 Dr. Heysham fined three young 

 men in Carlisle 10 each for killing game 

 without a certificate, and the next year that 

 well-known naturalist mulcted a Brampton 

 man in 20 for using a net ; ' which it is 

 hoped will act as a warning to poachers,' 

 remarked the Journal. In 1819, in the 

 same paper, is a long article on the iniquity 

 of the game laws, the cause being the wound- 

 ing of a poacher by one of Lord Lonsdale's 

 keepers ; not, as the editor carefully explained, 

 because the keeper was attacked, but because 

 the man ran away. Nothing seems to have 

 been done to the former. And as a last 

 specimen of old fashioned penalty, the Journal 

 relates how in 1824 two women were sent to 

 goal for three months because they were un- 

 able to pay a year's wages ' four and five 

 pounds for breaking, the one four pheasant's, 

 the other five partridge's eggs,' and how 

 penalties amounting to 350 were in 1822 

 hanging over a man in Leicestershire who 

 had killed seven pheasants a few days before 

 the time allowed by the law. 



Now and then a gleam of humour passes 

 down through the old pages as when in 1804 

 the Pacquet inserted the following erratum : 

 ' For " Sir Gilfrid Lawson's gamekeeper killed 

 1 4 woodcocks in one shot," read " one wood- 

 cock in 14 shots." ' We wonder if it is re- 

 corded in any Lowther game book about the 

 year 1808 that a keeper there shot in the 

 Eden ' with two barrels the extraordinary 

 number of 86 fish, the smallest 7 inches in 

 length.' There comes a wail from October 

 of the same year ' The preservation of the 



