TENTH AND ELEVENTH CENTURIES 39 
was reckoned by the number of swine which could stand 
under it. Porcarii are frequently mentioned in Domesday, 
and these were not mere swineherds, but rich men who 
rented the privilege of feeding pigs in the woodlands: 
Sir Henry Ellis often alludes to them in his researches.* 
Fowls seem to have been universally kept, although perhaps 
not in considerable numbers. It was a practice, often quoted, 
to pay fowls in lieu of other rent, where coin was very scarce, 
as in the Fen district of Lincolnshire, known by the name 
of Holland, or hay-land. Thus Pishey Thompson states 
that in 1279 sixty fowls were paid in lieu of five shillings, 
twelve in lieu of one shilling, and twenty-eight in lieu of two 
shillings and fourpence, which are entered in the extents 
of the Honour of Richmond.t Such instances might be 
further multiplied. These fowls were probably rather 
smaller than fowls at the present day, yet judging from the 
rough cuts of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries—in one of 
which an old hen is represented with a nestling on her back— 
they were such as could be matched now in many a farmyard. 
The Abbey Church at Waltham.—We next come across 
the names of some birds in connection with the Abbey 
Church at Waltham, in Essex, which was founded in the 
time of Canute, viz., the Crane, Thrush, Partridge, Pheasant, 
Magpie, Goose, Fowl, and Falcon.t The Pheasant and the 
Magpie, which are quite sufficiently identified, are here 
mentioned especially. These names occur in a bill of fare drawn 
up for monastic use in 1059, and preserved in a manuscript 
stated by Professor Dawkins to have been written about 1177.§ 
The Monks:of Rochester in Kent.—In 1089 we find an 
assignment to the monks of Rochester from certain lands 
belonging to Bishop Randulfus, of sixteen Pheasants, thirty 
Geese, three hundred Hens, a thousand Lampreys, a thousand 
eggs, four Salmon, and sixty sheaves of finest wheat. || 
* Ellis, ‘‘ Introduction to Domesday,” Vol. I., p. 88, e¢ seq. 
+ ‘Boston and The Hundred of Skirbeck in the County of Lincoln,” 
by P. Thompson, p. 169. 
+ See “The Foundation of Waltham Abbey,” by W. Stubbs. 
§ “Ibis,” 1869, p. 358, The next mention of the Pheasant is in 1100, and 
again in 1179 and 1299, In Ireland we first hear of it in 1589, and in Scotland 
in 1594, when it comes into an Act passed by James VI, (14th Parl, Edin,) 
who had not then ascended the English throne, 
|| Dugdale’s ‘‘ Monasticon Anglicanum ’’ (Vol. I., additions). 
