TENTH AND ELEVENTH CENTURIES 35 
“ General Introduction to Domesday Book,” * quotes authority 
for thinking that it meant not only the nest or brood, but the 
place destined for the breeding or training of Hawks, in 
evidence of which he cites a charter granted by Henry III. in 
the thirteenth century to the Church of York. + 
There are frequent mentions of Hawks’ “aeries”’ in 
Domesday, sometimes in conjunction with manorial or other 
rights, which Sir H. Ellis has been at the pains of collecting,t 
One of the instances of a Hawks’ breeding-place in the south 
of England cited by Ellis was in Sussex, on land belonging 
to Battle Abbey, which was founded by William I., where were 
“iii nidi accipitr’ in silua.’”’ These nests may have belonged 
to Peregrines, or more probably to Goshawks if they were in 
woods, for the nest of a Sparrow-Hawk would hardly have 
been of sufficient consequence to specify.§ Eyries of Hawks 
are also noticed in Domesday in Bucks, Gloucester, 
Worcester, Hereford, Shropshire, and, more _ frequently 
than in other counties, in Cheshire,|| as well as among the 
lands between the Ribble and the Mersey. 
The Great Fen District of Hast Anglia.—This is all the 
information about birds to be extracted from Domesday Book, 
but there are still a few other sources which can be tapped. 
The natural features of England in the eleventh and twelfth 
centuries differed less from those of the twentieth than is 
commonly supposed, but there was much more woodland. 
In 1217 Henry III. granted a Charter of the Forests, which 
perhaps reached their greatest extent in Lancashire and 
Yorkshire; there were also large untouched tracts in 
Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire, and Notts; while 
in the south and east of England there was more water and 
marsh. Especially must this have been so in what was 
known as the Fen Country of east England, where the Romans 
* Vol. I., p. 341. 
+ For a good exposition of the various forms of this word, and its earliest 
use bv authors see Swann’s ‘‘ Dictionary of English and Folk-names of British 
Birds,” p. 2. 
+t T.c., p. 340. 
+ 
§ The Rev. F. C. R. Jourdain reminds me that, although British Pere- 
erines. and Buzzards, also, now nest upon cl:ffs, vet they breed freely upon 
trees elsewhere, and no doubt used’ to do so in England, 
|| See “The Birds of Cheshire,” by Coward and Oldham, p, 18. 
