CuHapTer IV. 
TWELFTH CENTURY. 
The Twelfth Century: Hawking, described by chroniclers. Fines Paid in 
Falcons. Giraldus Cambrensis. 
Hawking in the Twelfth Century.—As has been already 
said, one leading feature in the lives of our Saxon and Norman 
ancestors was their vehement love of Falconry. There was 
something attractive in the art of training one bird to catch 
another, and then yield up its prey to its master. It was 
an ancient pursuit, far older than the Christian era, and so 
honourable an occupation was it considered that people carried 
a hawk on their fists when there was no intention whatever 
of hunting. This was so when Thomas a Becket went to 
France in 1158; on this occasion his retinue included hawks 
and hounds of different kinds. Yet probably neither Becket 
nor his numerous servants had thought of flying the hawks. 
It was the fashion to be accompanied by falcons and falconers 
as a mark of gentility, and this was carried on by the rich 
long after the twelfth century, a fact of which the later 
chronicles afford abundant evidence. Although among the 
manuscripts of the twelfth century there is no treatise on 
falconry extant in England, unless the Saxon colloquies are 
to be so termed, Mr. Harting has discovered laws on the subject 
in Spain.* The code in question consists of regulations, 
supposed to have been promulgated in a.p. 1180, by order 
of Sancho VI., King of Navarre. From these, observes Mr. 
Harting, it appears that the Hawks used in Navarre in 1180 
were the Falcon, the Goshawk and the Sparrow-Hawk. They 
were taken young from the nest and reared in the hawk-house, 
fed upon meal paste, mixed with the flesh of birds, such as 
Pigeons, Partridges or Water-Hens, cut up small, less paste ~ - 
being given as the Hawk grew older until at length it was 
strong enough to be fed twice a day on beef or mutton. When 
* « Bibliotheca Accipitraria,” by J. E. Harting, 1891, p. 111. 
