140 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY 
so, the Knight would hardly have flown anything at them 
but the Falcon, which he might have acquired locally, for 
Peregrine ‘“‘ eyesses’’ were to be obtained from Hunstanton 
cliff near by.* It may have been at Wolferton Wood also that 
the Spoonbills bred, but this is a mere conjecture, with nothing 
to verify it, unfortunately. 
One item is twopence to Thomas Pedder—the same man 
who was sent for the Plovers—for a tame Mallard to lure back 
the hawks in Hunstanton Marsh (p. 441).t On the same page 
we read of ‘ sekyng of ye haggard fawkon eallyd Cheny ” at 
Christmas time, possibly so named in compliment to my lady 
Chenys (p. 440), when as much as twenty pounds were laid 
out in costs. Elsewhere we hear of Hawks’ bells, most 
important for the retrieving of a lost one, and of the wages 
paid to Saunder the falconer, and in one place of “ fyer for 
the hawkys” (p. 9). Mr. Harting suggests that this should 
not read fyer, but tyer, 7.e., something to tire on or pull at, 
when sitting on the porch or block, to keep a hawk quiet. 
Nowhere is the Peregrine Falcon alluded to in the Accounts 
by name, yet the wild haggard “cheny”’ sounds as if she 
must have been one of this breed. 
Any English faiconer who had a Peregrine would have 
called it a Falcon or Lanner, or perhaps a Gentil Falcon in those 
days, the latter term being usually reserved for the female. 
2? 
* Although Hunstanton Cliff, sometimes called St. Edmund’s Point, 
was by no means lofty, and is now only sixty feet high, Peregrine Falcons 
persistently bred there for a great number of years, of which proof is given 
in the * Norwich Naturalists’ Transactions’? (Vol. V., p. 185). That they 
were known, and their value appreciated, as far back as 1604 is also certain, 
see ** Norwich Nat. Tr.”’ (1V., p. 658), for in the evidence room at Hunstanton 
Hall there exists a list of falcons taken from this cliff beginning with that 
year. This carefully kept faleconer’s list was drawn up by the Sir Hamon 
Lestrange of that date, who here records that between 1604 and 1653 he 
took on the estate no fewer than eighty-seven hawks, of which sixty-five were 
young ones from the nest. This eyrie is alluded to in Bishop Gilson’s edition 
of Camden’s “‘ Britannia,’ 1772 (Vol. J., p. 470). Mr. Farting has slown 
that eccording to Nicholas St: leman of Snettisham, a parish a few miles 
away, it ceased to exist aLout 1818 (‘‘ Zoologist,’’ 1£90, p. 418). 
+ The luring of a lost hawk was a common practice. It is mentioned in 
the Middleton Accounts, where, under date 1524, we have ‘* ij molerdes to 
hayse [7.c., to lure or train] the hawkes ”’ (t.c., p. 368), and elsewhere allusions 
to it may be met with. Tame Ducks, which were good enough for this 
purpose, were to be distinguished from Wild Ducks. In the “ Munimenta 
Gildhalla Londonensis,’’ a domestic duck is called a dunghill mallard for 
distinction’s sake (Rolls Ed”., I., Ixxxiii.), and such a fow] would have 
answered the purpose of a lure. 
