ANCIENT FALCONRY 187 



of a wolf or boar's head, the whole skin of the animal being 

 stuffed so as to make it appear alive. While the bird is 

 feeding the falconer begins to move the figure gradually, 

 in consequence of which the bird learns to fasten itself so 

 as to stand firm, notwithstanding the precipitate motions 

 which are gradually given to the stuffed animal; she 

 would lose her meat if she quitted her hold, and therefore 

 she takes care to secure herself. When these first exercises 

 are finished, the skin is placed on a cart, drawn by a horse 

 at full speed ; the bird follows it, and is particularly eager 

 in feeding ; and then when they come to fly on the field, 

 she never fails to dart on the first beast of the kind she 

 discovers, and begins to scoop out the eyes. This puts 

 the quarry in such distress that the hawkers have time 

 to approach and despatch it with their spears." 



During the reign of the " Merrie Monarch "St. Albans 

 seems to have been a favourite hawking ground. Shake- 

 speare says : 



"Ride into St. Albans, 

 Where the King and Queen do mean to hawk." 



At St. Albans, Caxton printed a treatise on hawking, 

 hunting, and heraldry. Strutt, in his Sports and Pastimes, 

 mentions an historical fact related by Hall, who states 

 that Henry VIII, while pursuing his hawk on foot at 

 Hitchin, in Hertfordshire, attempted, with the assistance 

 of a leaping-pole, to jump over a ditch which was half- 

 full of muddy water. The pole broke, and the king fell 

 head foremost into the mud, where he would have been 

 stifled had not a footman, named John Moody, come to 

 the rescue and released his Majesty from his perilous 

 situation. " And so," says the honest historian, " God 

 of hys goodnesse preserved him." 



