264 THE KING'S CORMORANTS. 



cormorants, to Venice, having been stayed in his passage -. 

 thither, and his cormorants taken away from him by the 

 Duke of Savoy." 



[" From these two documents," says Mr. Salvin, " it 

 would appear that cormorant fishing was likely to have 

 become fashionable upon the continent, if poor Wood and 

 his birds had not come to grief. 



" The civil wars in the next reign extinguished the 

 office of The Master of the Royal Cormorants, and his 

 assistants, and in the Record Office we find this petition 

 from poor old Mr. Wood, who appears to have been 

 rather hard-up and neglected in his old age. 



'"A prayer of Richard Wood, of Walton-on-Thames, 

 Surrey, to Charles II., for restoration to his place as cor- 

 morant keeper, which he held, he says, from King James's 

 first coming to England, to the late wars, in which he 

 served as a soldier, but being now ninety-five years old, 

 has been forced to retire to a dwelling at Walton.' "*] 



" A document in the State Paper Office, sealed with the 

 royal signet, and addressed to the ' Treasurer of the 

 Chamber ' for the time being, authorizes him to pay unto 

 John Harris, gentleman, His Majesty's cormorant keeper, 

 for his repairing yearly unto the north parts of England 



* The above extracts were communicated by Mr. Salvin to Mr. Frank Buck- 

 land's journal, Land and Water, in 1867, in a series of articles on " Cormorant 

 Fishing." 



Some interesting chapters on the subject will be found at the end of Freeman 

 and Salvin's " Falconry ; its Claims, History, and Practice. ' 8vo, 1859. 



