HISTORY AND LITERATURE. ii 



hunting, as then enjoyed by the upper classes, entailed much 

 suffering and oppression on the lower. The clergy were par- 

 ticular offenders. By a charter of Henry III. archbishops and 

 bishops were allowed, when travelling through the royal forests, 

 on the King's service, to kill two deer under certain conditions. 

 In time their permission came to be construed more largely, 

 and the priest grew as mighty a hunter as the baron. Chaucer 

 has many a hit at this unclerical practice. In the Prologue to 

 his ' Canterbury Tales ' the monk is described as — 



A fayre for the maistrie, 

 An outrider that loved venerie ; 

 A manly man to bell an abbot able. 

 Full many a deinte hors hadde he in stable. 



Therefore he was a prickasoure a right : 

 Greihoundes he hadde as swift as foul of flight : 

 Of pricking and of hunting for the hare 

 Was all his lust, for no cost wolde he spare. 



Again, in the ' Ploughman's Tale,' if that be truly Chaucer's, 

 which is specially directed against the luxury and loose living of 

 the clergy, it is laid among the monk's malpractices that he will 



ride on courses as a knight 

 With hawkis and with houndis eke, 



and that, 



He mote go hunte with dogge and bich 

 And blowen his home and cry in Hey. 



Of a certain Walter, bishop of Rochester in the thirteenth 

 century, Strutt tells us that 'he was an excellent hunter, and 

 so fond of the sport that at the age of fourscore he made 

 hunting his sole employment, to the total neglect of the duties 

 of his office.' Another occupant of the episcopal bench, 

 Reginald Brian, bishop of Worcester, we find writing, in the 

 following century, to his brother, bishop of St. Davids, to 

 remind him of a promised gift of some hounds. His heart 

 languishes, he says, for their arrival : 'let them come then, oh! 



