FALCONRY. 219 



manned reclaimed and used them in steed of hawkes when other could not 

 be had." 



Historic anecdotes on falconry might be given in great numbers, and 

 notices of Falcons. Perhaps the most famous is the oft-told one mentioned 

 by Scott — the dialogue between Mary of Lorraine (mother of the Queen of 

 Scots) and the Earl of Angus. When she urged him to give up his strong 

 castle of Tantallon to her, he answered indirectly, as if to the Hawk which 

 he held upon his wrist and was feeding at the time : " The devil," said he, 

 "is in the greedy Gled [Kite]! will she never be full?" As the Queen 

 still declined the hint, he replied, " The castle, madam, is yours at command ; 

 but by St. Bride of Douglas I must be the Captain ; and I will keep it for 

 you as well as any one you will put into it." 



Miss Agnes Strickland, in the ' Queens of Scotland,' vol. ii. p, 188, 2nd 

 edit., gives the authority for this tale (Hume of Godscroft's ' History of the 

 Douglases '), and recites it in much the same terms, adding that the bird was 

 a Goshawk. 



The Duke of Gloucester, at an early period of his life, used to enjoy 

 flying his Hawks on his manor of Notting Hill. This fact does not stamp his 

 character as evil ; and the light of modern research has changed Richard HI. 

 from a hump-backed sinner almost into an historic saint ('Athenseum,' Sept. 4, 

 1875, p. 302 : critique on " Tewkesbury Abbey. By John Henry Blunt"). 



Every one knows the origin of our London mews. " The Royal mews 

 stood between St. Martin's Lane and Hedge Lane, where the Falcons of the 

 Sovereigns were kept as early as 1319 ; and Chaucer was one of the Clerks 

 thereof" (Mark Lemon's ' Streets of London,' p. 260). Messrs. Salvin and 

 Brodrick, in their book on Falconry, p. 27, speak of the Mews at Charing 

 Cross as established in 1377 bv Richard H. 



Though " the Blessed bird," as Sir David Lindsay calls her, belonging 

 to James V. of Scotland was not a Falcon, but a Parrot or Papingo, yet, since 

 the King " wherever he went carried her on his wrist, as other gentlemen did 



2 H 



