58 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY 
judging from the Patent Rolls of Edward I.,* there can be no 
doubt of there having been heronries more than six hundred 
years ago, that is to say A.D. 1300 or earlier. They had their 
value, and it appears from this document that protection was 
needed for them in certain parishes, viz.. Whinburgh, Cantley 
on the Yare, and Wormegay on the Nar.t Moreover, these 
parishes contained, if the preamble is to be taken literally, 
eyries of Sparrow-hawks, Spoonbills and Bitterns, in addition 
to the Herons. 
Blackborough Nunnery.—Another Norfolk record, although 
it does not touch Herons, to which Mr. J. C. Tingey has drawn 
attention, is an entry of the twelfth or early thirteenth century, 
in the unpublished Cartulary of Blackborough Nunnery, 
near King’s Lynn. In this William de Warren, who Mr. 
Tingey has reason to believe died in 1208, the lord of Wirmegay 
or Wormegay—the site of one of the heronries just mentioned 
—concedes certain holdings. The concession is made for the 
annual payment by Thurchetel of Lynn of ‘“ duas curleus 
vel i11j°* aves vel octo cerceles vel viij hulvestres [silvestres, 
a.e., wild-fowl]”’ in lieu of money. The ‘“cerceles”’ were 
probably Teal: the word is used in the same sense in the 
Middleton accounts, to be quoted in the next chapter, and 
has its equivalent in the French “ Sarcelle.” According to 
Dugdale this Nunnery was entitled to an annual gift of four 
hundred eels from the fishery of Emma de Bellofago at Wilton 
(“ Monasticon Anglicanum,” IV., p. 204); perhaps it should 
read ‘‘ sticks of els,” as four hundred would be a very small 
number: a bundle of ten sticks was two hundred and fifty 
eels, 
The Monk of St. Albans.—It was ingthis century that 
England was visited by flocks of CrossbiJls. This fact is 
vouched for by the Monk of St. Albans, Matthew Paris, who 
would have thought such a circumstance beneath his notice 
if the birds had not attacked the apple orchards, which in 
the thirteenth century had already assumed a considerable 
importance in the western counties where cider was made. 
* “ Calendar of Patent Rolls,” pp. 546 and 621. In the second passage 
the names of the birds are erroneously entered as Herons, Bustards and 
Buzzards, the right reading being heyronum, poplorum, (spoonbills) bittorum. 
+ Professor Newton, ‘‘ Norwich Naturalists’ Tr.,’’ VI., p. 159. 
