152 HAWKING. 



Scotland, where excellent Hawks are bred, there was 

 an act of parliament claiming them " to be reserved 

 to his majesty, with the falconers' salaries, according 

 to ancient custom ;" and in som parts, there is still 

 an old custom observed, of claiming a hen from each 

 house, or from a certain number of houses in each 

 parish, as due to the royal falconers. They were 

 said to have been originally taken as food for the 

 king's Hawks*. 



No amusement seems to have been followed with 

 -so much eagerness as hawking in almost every 

 country in Europe; and from the earliest times, even 

 before William the Conqueror's days, it was the 

 favourite pursuit of the royal families and nobility 

 of England. The training and flying of Hawks 

 formed part of the education of every young man of 

 rank : king Alfred is said to have written a treatise 

 upon the subject ; and even ladies followed it as 

 eagerly as the gentlemen. The amusement was 

 occasionally followed on foot, but, generally, parti- 

 cularly on downs and in open countries, it was 

 pursued on horseback. In woods and covers, how- 

 ever, or where horses could not easily follow, the 

 sportsmen were furnished with long stout poles for 

 leaping over ditches, which we learn from a story 

 told of king Henry the Eighth, who, one day when 

 pursuing his Hawk, at Hitchen, in Hertfordshire, 

 attempted, with the assistance of his pole, to jump 

 over a wide ditch, full of muddy water, but, the pole 

 unfortunately breaking, the king fell, head over ears, 

 into the thick mud, where he might have been suf- 

 focated, had not one of his attendants, seeing the 

 * Barry's Orkney. 



