xvi INTRODUCTION. 



Henry Sadler, the third son of Sir Ralph (see the note to 

 No. 19, pp. 16, 17, and "Notes to the Illustrations," p. 242). 

 James I., as is well known, was an enthusiastic sportsman, 

 and especially delighted in Hawking, on which amusement he 

 spent considerable sums annually, as may be seen by the 

 entries of payments made during this reign, printed in Devon's 

 " Issues of the Exchequer." * 



His portrait as a youth, with a sparrow-hawk on his fist, is 

 here reproduced from a scarce engraving by Raddon, and his 

 appearance in after-life is shown in the portrait by Vandyck. 



It was in his reign that Sir Thomas Monson, who succeeded 

 Sir Ralph Sadler as Royal Falconer, was said to have given 

 ;^iooo for a cast of falcons — a story which has been re- 

 peatedly told in print, but which is altogether based upon a 

 misapprehension. The facts are correctly stated by Sir 

 Antony Weldon in his " Court and Character of King James," 

 1650 ; the truth being that Sir Thomas Monson spent ;^iooo 

 before he succeeded in getting a cast of jerfalcons that were 

 perfect for flying at the kite, and this he might very well have 

 done, seeing that he would have to defray the cost of 

 expeditions to Norway or Iceland for them.t 



By great good fortune, while these pages were passing 

 through the press, I learnt that a lineal descendant of the 

 Hon. Lewis Latham, Falconer to Charles I., was living at 

 Hyattsville, Maryland, U.S.A., in the person of Mr. F. A. 

 Holden, and that he had in his possession a contemporary 

 portrait of his ancestor. I lost no time in communicating 

 with him, and in due course received a photograph of the por- 

 trait, here reproduced, with permission to publish it. 



All the Stuarts were fond of Hawking, but after the 

 Restoration the sport ceased to be popular. The causes 

 which led to its decline were many and various. The disas- 

 trous state of the country during the period of the civil wars 



* See also Professor Newton's account of Hawking in Norfolk, appended to 

 the second edition of Lubbock's " Fauna of Norfolk," 1879, pp. 226-227, and the 

 supplementary remarks thereon, contributed by the present writer to the Trans • 

 actions of the Norfolk Naturalists' Society, 1880, vol. iii. pp. 82-89. 



t See note to No. 27. 



