4 FOX-HUNTING FROM SHIRE TO SHIRE 



same, and when the Abbots and Monks of St Denis 

 had been forbidden to waste their time by hunting, 

 they represented to Charlemagne that the flesh of 

 hunted animals was salutary for sick monks, and 

 that the skins of the slain were useful for binding 

 their service books. 



"When Bishops, at that early period, made an 

 Episcopal Visitation of their diocese, they took 

 with them hawks and hounds, as indispensable 

 portions of their baggage, so that they might agree- 

 ably vary business with pleasure, and mingle the 

 'utile' with the 'dulce.' When a Bishop did not 

 take in his train his own hawks and hounds, he looked 

 for them to be supplied to him, either by the leading 

 laymen of the neighbourhood, or, failing that, by 

 the local Priest. The Archdeacon did the same at 

 their Visitations, which made the tax upon the 

 country clergy still heavier than the later payment 

 of Synodels and Decretals. Indeed, so burdensome 

 became the grievance, that when the Archdeacon 

 of Berkshire made his Visitation, the Clergy were 

 specially exempted by Alexander the Third from 

 providing him with hawks and hounds. The Arch- 

 bishop of York, in 1321, was a mighty hunter, and 

 had in his train a pack of hound and two hundred 

 retainers. The various Abbeys on his route were 

 required to support both retainers and hounds ; 

 and the jovial Archbishop enjoyed himself by 

 hunting from parish to parish, at the expense of 

 his hosts. 



" During Lent, hunting was stopped both for 

 Clergy and Laity ; and the Good Sergeanty— as he 

 was called — of the fifteen buck hounds that formed 

 the royal pack in Northamptonshire, in 1317, had 

 to maintain the hounds at his own expense, but was 

 recouped by a grant, rent free, of seventy acres of 



