THIRTEENTH CENTURY 55 
Doubtless the Abbot of Crowland, and his sixty-two or 
more monks, were entirely dependent on the supply of fish 
and wild-fowl, which were to them as cornfields.* 
In a very interesting communication to the “Field” of 
April 27th, 1878, on the subject of ‘‘ Decoys Past and Present,” 
Mr. J. Hoare states that decoys for catching Wild Ducks 
“were common in England in the reign of King John [1199- 
1216], when they were looked upon as an adjunct of the King’s 
forest, and as they appertained to the royal prerogative, no 
one dare draw them without license. There were some 
celebrated decoys in Holland and Kesteven in Lincolnshire, 
which, being a subject of litigation about the year 1280, we 
find the importance attached to them in those days duly set 
forth in the Rolls of Parliament.”’ 
Mr. Hoare’s researches show at what an early period these 
decoys were commenced, yet they must not be under- 
stood as having been decoys on the Dutch plan. The 
system of enticing Ducks into a tunnel net (which gradually 
curved and lessened in size) by means of a trained dog, which 
curiosity prompted the birds to follow, was not introduced 
until later. The operation in all probability consisted, as 
Mr. T. Southwell supposed,t in the simpler but much less 
efficacious plan of driving the Ducks into hoop nets and then 
catching them by hand. There was another method of catching 
the fowl, which was by the driving of “ flappers” in July, 
when no doubt a good many old Ducks with shed primaries 
were caught too. It will always be with the eastern counties 
that the early decoys are associated, and much of very great 
interest might be written on this head. 
Household Accounts, Feasts, and Prices.—Very few Privy- 
purse or Household Accounts were kept in the thirteenth 
and fourteenth centuries; in fact there were not many 
“ 
* In Cordeaux’s ‘‘ Birds of the Humber” (p. 146) a quotation is given 
from William of Malmesbury, who lived in the twelfth century, to the effect 
that the Lincolnshire fens were so covered with Coots and Ducks, and the 
flashes (pools) with Fowl, that in moulting time, when they could not fly, the 
natives could take two or three thousand at a draught with their nets. 
This passage, if it be Malmesbury’s, which is very doubtful, is certainly 
not in the “ De Gestis Regum ”’ (1125), nor in the ‘‘ De Gestis Pontificum ”’ 
(1125), although in the latter work there is an allusion to young water-fowl 
in the account of Thorney, which is in Lincolnshire, see note by Professor E. 
Bensly in ‘‘ Notes and Queries ’’ (Sept. 23rd, 1916). 
t ‘‘ Norwich Nat. Tr.,” IT., p. 538. 
