TWELFTH CENTURY 41 
a month old, the training commenced, and for this directions 
are given. 
In England, as in France, Goshawks and Falcons were 
flown in the open country, but the keeping of them was not 
confined to country establishments; on the contrary it 
extended to towns and even to the city of London. “Many 
citizens,’ says William Fitz-Stephen, who wrote a tract 
in the twelfth century relating to the metropolis, “take 
delight in Sparrow-hawks, Goss-hawks, and such like and 
in Dogs to hunt in the woody ground.’ From the context 
he is here alluding more particularly to forests on the north 
side of London, where, according to this author, there lurked 
Bucks and Does, Wild Boars, and Bulls, the latter probably 
in a semi-wild state. 
Mews for Hawks and Falcons in London.—The practice 
of keeping Hawks in London, which may have been partly 
for use in processions, was not discontinued, for in the 
fourteenth century we learn that Richard II. still had them 
in mews at Charing Cross. This fact is related bv John 
Stow, who wrote a Survey of London in 1598 (republished 
1754).* Yet, as Mr. Mullens remarks, there was clear country 
within easy reach of London, as at Mortlake and Richmond, 
where hawking could be practised if desired. Another early 
allusion to Falcons being used for the chase is cited in the 
“ History and Antiquities of Furness Abbey” by T. A. Beck, 
and Mitchell’s ‘‘ Birds of Lancashire” (p. xiv.). The reference 
is to an eyrie of hawks which was reserved on certain 
mortgaged lands at the time of the second Crusade, i.e., 
between 1135 and 1153. 
* Stow is not the only writer who mentions them, for John Norden, 
writing five years earlier (1593), has the following about the rebuilding of the 
Royal Mews. ‘‘ King Henry VIII caused it most especially to be erected for a 
place wherein to preserve his haukes, and therein to mew them; and placed 
in the middle of the court or yard a Dovehouse for feeding them, which is now 
decayed. It serveth now for a most stately stable for Her Majesty’s [Q. 
Elizabeth] horses and palphrayes”’ (‘‘ Speculi Britannie Pars ’’ printed for 
The Camden Soc., p. xviii). It is said to have been this and similar con- 
versions which account for the present meaning which the word ‘‘ mews ” 
bears, viz. a stable or place for the housing of horses. These Charing Cross 
Hawk-Mews were about where the National Gallery now stands. Their fate 
was that of so many other old houses—to be eventually burnt, with, the 
historian tells us, many great horses and much hay, see Stow’s ‘‘ Survey of 
London and Westminster ” (Vol. II., p. 576). I find the name retained in a 
map as recent as 1761. 
