12 HUNTING. 



reverend father ! without delay ; let my woods re-echo with 

 the music of their cry and the cheerful notes of the horn, and 

 let the walls of my palace be decorated with the trophies of the 

 chase ! ' Again, William de Clowne, Abbot of St. Mary's in 

 Leicestershire, was so famous a hunter and so renowned for 

 his breed of hounds, that he was granted, by royal charter, the 

 privilege of holding an annual fair or market for their sale. 

 From the earliest times, indeed, it seems Churchmen were 

 wont to be particular sinners in this respect, for Mr. Froude 

 tells us that Wulsig and Walnoth, Abbots of the great monas- 

 tery of St. Albans in the ninth century, were notorious for 

 neglecting their duties for the society of hound and hawk, as 

 well as for other society even less convenient for an abbot. 

 Henry II. and Richard II. both in their times tried to put a 

 stop to such scandals, but probably more with a view to thwart 

 the power and ambition of the priesthood than from any 

 strictly moral motive. At any rate neither they nor their 

 successors seem to have been able to effect much. In the 

 reign of Henry VI. the clergy are particularly warned against 

 ' hawkynge, huntynge, and dawnsynge \ ' and at the time of the 

 English Reformation the see of Norwich alone owned thirteen 

 parks well stocked with game of every kind ! 



The presence of ladies in the hunting-field dates from very 

 early times. At first probably they were content to be spec- 

 tators only, watching the sport from wooden stands erected for 

 the purpose, beneath which the game was driven. But they 

 evidently soon aspired to a more active part. From an illus- 

 trated manuscript of the fourteenth century, some cuts from 

 which are given by Strutt, we learn that ladies took the field 

 on horseback, and bestrode their horses, moreover, after the 

 fashion of men ! How they disposed of the garments proper 

 to their sex, which they apparently still retained, does not seem 

 very clear. The costume now in vogue among Amazons did 

 not apparently come into use till three centuries later, and then 

 only partially. Strutt quotes a writer of that time to the effect 

 that the ladies of Bury in Suffolk, ' that used hawking and hunting. 



