FIFTEENTH CENTURY 81 
were birds of the aviary as well as found wild. This rearing 
by hand was regularly practised at a somewhat later date, and 
in the reign of Henry VIII. would seem to have been a custom- 
ary proceeding. We know that this King’s servants of whom 
one at least was French, reared Pheasants, at the King’s 
country palace at Eltham in Kent, keeping them in aviaries 
until they were wanted for eating. In a very entertaining 
volume, entitled ‘‘ The Privy Purse Expenses of King Henry 
the Highth,’* Sir N. H. Nicolas quotes many entries about 
them. Here we twice read of as much as two crowns, which 
would be nine shillings and fourpence, being paid to a French 
priest, who was the Pheasant breeder. 
Turtle Doves were only seen occasionally, maybe, and 
cultivators of the soil would not have had to complain of 
their plots being devastated by armies of omnivorous Wood 
Pigeons. The House Sparrow was establishing itself, and 
was already honoured with a nickname,t Rooks were being 
seriously complained of, and an Act was passed in Scotland in 
1424 (I James 1, cap. 19) to keep them in check, which, put 
into modern English, ran as follows :—‘‘ Item. Therefore as 
men consider that Rooks building in church-yards, orchards, 
or trees do great damage upon corn, it is ordained that they 
whom such trees pertain to, do let them build, and suffer 
on no wise that their young ones fly away, and where 
it be proved that they build and the young be flown, and 
the nests be found in the trees at May-day, the trees shall 
forfeit to the King.” In 1457 this was followed by a 
second Act (II James 14, cap. 31) which also proscribed 
Eagles, Buzzards, Kites, and some Hawk called “ Mittales”’ 
(elsewhere spelled Mittaine and Myttaine).{ From 1457 
until the present time it has been a moot question whether 
Rooks do more harm than good, but the balance of evidence 
is against them in the twentieth century as it was in the 
fifteenth, and many farmers would like to see these obsolete 
Acts revived, and the increasing Rooks greatly lessened. 
In the fifteenth century the larger sorts of birds of 
prey were no doubt abundant : the Buzzard, a common 
* See pp. 10, 181, 265, 266, 271, 276. 
{ Phyllyp Sparrowe. 
t Probably from Mittle, to hurt or wound (see Jamieson’s Scot. Dict.). 
G 
