56 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY 
educated enough to know how to write them. Whale and 
porpoise were commonly eaten at feasts, and many birds. 
In Lent, 1246, Henry III. ordered the Sheriffs of London 
to purchase a hundred pieces of the best whale, and two 
porpoises.* We learn from the ‘* Rotulus Hospitii Comitisse 
Leicestrix ” that two hundred pieces, or two cwt., of whale 
were bought for the Countess of Leicester and the King of 
the Romans, previously to Palm Sunday, 1265, besides which 
grampus or porpoise and sea-wolves t are mentioned several 
times in the Roll during Lent.t 
For long after this the appearance of the porpoise in bills 
of fare is frequent, and it was dressed in a variety of ways. 
Sometimes it was prepared with a sauce made of fine bread- 
crumbs, mixed with vinegar and sugar. On the occasion of 
a City banquet, the porpoise was to be brought whole into 
the banqueting hall. and then carved or “undertraunched”’ 
by the officer in attendance.$ 
In 1251 Henry III. held a great feast at York, and 
in the ‘Rotulos Familie” of Edward I. there are items 
of scullery expenditure as early as 1292.|| It cannot be said 
that they convey much information, but they are perhaps the 
earliest of the kind in which birds are noticed. Here we 
learn that sevenpence was paid by the larderer for a Goose, 
two shillings for six Geese, a penny for some corn for the 
Geese, the same (?) for a Falcon, for a Hen, and for some 
parsley. A wild buck cost eightpence, two sticks of eels were 
elevenpence, and a lamprey a shilling. 
The editor, the Rev. J. Brand, remarks that the items 
of diet in the Roll evince how rigidly Lent was kept. Of the 
shellfish and other fish mentioned, such as herrings, congers, 
eels, pike, lampreys, gurnards, trout, whiting, plaice, salmon, 
all except one (the lamprey) are eaten at the present day ; 
yet one cannot help wondering how minnows (if by menums 
these little fish are meant) could have obtained a place at the 
royal board. 
* “Manners and Household Expenses of England,” 1841, p. xlii. 
t Seals. 
t T.c., p. xhi. 
§ Bidwell, ‘‘ Norwich Nat. Tr.,” IV., p. 594. 
| 
*« Archaeologia,” 1806, p. 362. 
