Class II. FALCONRY. 211 



^■Ju^ ■ Ne is there hauke which mantleth heron pearch. 

 Whether high towring, or accoasting low. 

 But I the measure of her flight doe search, 

 '^' And all her pray, and all her diet know.* 



In short, this diversion was, among the old 

 English, the pride of the rich, and the privilege 

 of the poor, no rank of men seems to have been 

 excluded the amusement: vte learn from the 

 book of St. Albans,'\ that every degree had its 

 peculiar hawk, from the emperor down to the 

 holy water clerJi. Vast was the expence that 

 sometimes attended this sport ; in the reign of 

 James I. Sir Thomas MonsonX is said to have 

 given a thousand pounds for a cast of hawks : 

 we are not then to wonder at the rigor of the 

 laws that tended to preserve a pleasure that was 

 carried to such an extravagant pitch. In the 

 34th of Edward II L it was made felony to 

 steal a hawk; to take its eggs, even in a person's 

 own ground, was punishable with imprison- 

 ment for a year and a day, besides a fine at the * ' 

 king's pleasure : in queen ElizabetJis reign the . 

 imprisonment ^vas reduced to three months; but 

 the offender was ^to find security for his good 

 behaviour for seven years, or lie in prison till he 



* Book Y I. Canto 2. '9^1 ;-''r*^. ■' 



'• t. A treatise on hunting, hawking and heraldry, printed at 



St. Alhayis by Caxton, and attributed to Dame Julicai Barnes. 



X 'Siii Ant- fFtldon's coxixi of K.. James. 105. IX y^','^ r 



