HAWKS AND HAWKING. 28] 
When Edward III. invaded France, he had with him, according 
to Froissart, thirty faleoners, and every day he either hunted or 
went to the river for the purpose of hawking, as his fancy inclined 
him. A curious description of a hawk’s perch of this period, 
which a lady had put up at the head of her bed and covered with 
blue velvet, is given by Chaucer, in “ The Squire’s Tale” (pt. ii.) 
The Paston Letters, written in the reign of Edward IV., give 
us also a curious insight into the ways and doings of English 
falconers in the middle ages ;* as do likewise the various House- 
hold Books and Privy Purse Expenses already referred to. 
Henry VII. used to import Goshawks from France, and gave as 
much as £4 for a single bird—a large sum in those days.t 
Henry VIII.’s love of hawking is well known from the 
anecdote related of him in Hall's Chronicle (sub an. xvi.),t to 
the effect that being one day out hawking at Hitchin, in Hert- 
fordshire, he was leaping a dyke with a hawking-pole, when it 
suddenly broke and the King was immersed head first in the mud 
and water, and might have lost his life, had not Edmund Moody, 
one of the falconers, immediately come to his assistance and 
dragged him out. 
During the reign of Elizabeth hawking was much in vogue, 
particularly with the gentlemen of Cornwall and Devonshire, as 
we learn from Carew.§ Nichols, in his ‘ Progresses and Public 
Processions of Queen Elizabeth’ (3 vols. 4to, 1788—1807), has 
given some interesting details concerning the Queen’s participation 
in this and other field-sports, which want of space only prevents 
me from quoting. 
James I., as is well known, was a most enthusiastic sportsman, 
and especially delighted in hawking, on which he spent con- 
siderable sums annually. As I have elsewhere given some 
account of his hawking establishment, and of his fishing with 
trained Cormorants, || it will be unnecessary to repeat here the 
information which I have collected on the subject. I need only 
* See Prof. Newton’s remarks on these letters, Appendix to Lubbock’s ‘ Fauna of 
Norfolk,’ 2nd ed. p. 224. 
+ Bentley, ‘ Excerpta Historica,’ p. 95. 
¢ See also ‘Union of the two Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancastre and 
Yorke,’ 2nd ed. 1558, pl. exxxix. 
§ ‘The Survey of Cornwall,’ 1602, folio 24. 
|| ‘Transactions of the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists’ Society,’ vol. iii. 
pp. 79—94 ; and Dickens's ‘ Dictionary of the Thames,’ 1879. art. Ornithology. 
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