SIXTEENTH CENTURY 111 
for its edible qualities, and further evidence might easily be 
produced of the demand for them on any great occasion. 
We have a notable instance of it in the feast of the Serjeants 
of the Inner Temple, which was a very elaborate occasion in 
London in 1532. The good things provided are enumerated 
in Stow’ ‘‘Survey of London,” and again in Sir William 
Dugdale’s ‘* Origines Judiciales,” from which source we learn 
that the number of Swans served was a hundred and sixty- 
eight. More Serjeants’ banquets took place in 1555, and at 
these also about ninety-five Swans were brought to table. A 
fattened Swan was occasionally spoken of as a franked Swan, 
the word “frank” signifying an inclosure in which animals 
were fed,* but the word does not seem to be met with in con- 
nection with the Norwich Swan-pit to be mentioned presently. 
Lincolnshire and Norfolk Swan-rolls.—Although the 
largest swannery in England was at Abbotsbury, in Dorset- 
shire—and the oldest, for it was granted to an ancestor of 
the present Earl of Ilchester on the dissolution of the monas- 
teries—there were probably nowhere a greater number of 
Swans maintained than in Lincolnshire. In this county the 
inhabitants of Crowland were exempted from the restrictions 
imposed in the reign of Edward IV., on their petition setting 
forth that their town stood ‘“‘ all in marsh and fen,” and that 
they had great “games” of Swans, by which the greatest 
part of their relief and living was sustained.t It is easy to 
understand how valuable the big birds must have been in a 
district where neither corn nor cattle were too abundant. 
The produce of meres and rivers was what the fenfolk 
of Lincolnshire had to rely on for their maintenance. Accord- 
ingly some very elaborate regulations were in force for the 
protection of Swans, of which the most important are to be 
found in a document concerning the river Witham, which 
bears date 1570.t This old deed or ordinance, proclaimed 
at a swan-herd’s court, or a “swan-moote,” which is stated 
to have been taken from a still older ordinance by one 
Matthew Nayler, who was perhaps bailiff of the rivers, 
* As in the “ Records of Lydd,” p. 116 (N.F. Ticehurst). 
+ 6 Rot. Parl. 260, as given by Manning. 
+ For particulars of this ordinance see ‘‘ Archaeologia,” 1812 (XVI, p. 
185). 
