120 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY 
across the moat; the central portion as shown contains what, 
in the sixteenth century, was the Guard room, with the Priest’s 
chamber above it. The Accounts, which are really house- 
keeping books, run from 1519, two years after Sir Thomas le 
Straunge* had succeeded his cousin, to 1578, when Hamon le 
Straunge was in possession. It is now eighty-four years since 
a part were printed in the “‘ Archaeologia ’t by Mr. D. Gurney, 
who supposes some of them to have been written by the 
steward, some by Sir Thomas’s personal servant (who in 1549 
was Eustace Rolfe), and one or two by Lady le Straunge herself, 
as for instance such entries as ‘‘ when you went a-hawking with 
my uncle, Roger Woodhous,” or “to play at cards with my 
son Cressen*.” It is to behoped that these singular Accounts, 
of which at present only selections, amounting to about 
one-third of the whole, have been published, may some day 
see the light in their entirety. 
A few years ago Mr. Hamon le Strange, the late 
owner and representative of this ancient family, carefully 
indexed the four paper volumes containing these household 
notes, and, with this useful aid to work by, he has been able to 
look up many references to birds and fishes which are not in 
Daniel Gurney’s abridgment in the ‘“Archaeologia.” The 
majority of the birds here named are not what we now call 
game, nor do they appear to have been regarded in that light, or 
to have been captured by the family and their friends for the 
sake of sport. They were looked on as a part of the produce 
of the country, to be netted, snared, or shot with the crossbow, 
either by le Straunge’s paid keepers or by any other fowlers, 
and in the latter case they were paid for when brought to the 
buttery door in the same way as fish, pork and vegetables, and 
entered in the house-book by the housekeeper. In the remarks 
which follow, all these, with the dates which rightly belong to 
them, as fixed by Mr. le Strange, have been taken account of. 
The month and day are placed in square brackets, intended 
to indicate that they are not in the original manuscript books, 
* Walter Rye, who gives many genealogical particulars of the Lestranges 
in his ‘ Norfolk Families” (1913, p. 477), states that this knight was 
Esquire of the Body to Henry VIII. at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. The 
preparations for this great occasion appear in the Accounts for 1520. 
Vol. XXV., 1834. 
