SIXTEENTH CENTURY 147 
and John Audeley, are a second time each remunerated with 
twenty pence for killmg rats with “‘ratton bayn.”* It is to 
be hoped that they succeeded in clearing the mansion effec- 
tually of such undesirable marauders. 
Few departments of English history have been less 
cultivated than that relating to the household accounts of the 
upper classes in the sixteenth century, which tell us about 
their meals and manners, and considered zoologically often 
present an aspect of very great interest. Not a few of them 
were kept in eventful and troubled times—a period which 
in the case of le Straunge and his family takes us through 
the greater part of three reigns, ending in 1578, the year 
which witnessed Queen LElizabeth’s stately entry into 
Norwich. 
The House and Farm Accounts of the Shuttleworths.t-— 
There are not many existing household accounts of the 
sixteenth century on the lines of le Straunge: the most 
appropriate with which to compare them are the Middleton 
Accounts (Hist. MSS. Com.), and those of Shuttleworth of 
Lancashire, which latter contain also some references to 
falconry. About twenty-five species of Lancashire birds are 
here enumerated, some of them under rather peculiar names, 
viz.: the skergrys or scargrasse, which, according to Mitchell’s 
“ Birds of Lancashire” (p. 166), was the Water Rail, the tullettet 
(Ringed Plover, idem, p. 177), the curlue hilpp (Whimbrel, 
adem, p. 200), the snipe knave (qu. Jack Snipe), the pire or 
piere (Dunlin), ooselles, youlwringes (Yellow Hammers), dige 
brides or digge birdies (young ducks),§ etc. Ducks received 
in lieu of rent are entered as boon-ducks.|| Dunes were 
not Pochards, as the editor supposes, but Knots (Mitchell, 
t.c., p. 192). Twelve scriltes, or scrittes, brought bome in 
June with Lapwings and a Grey Plover, were most likely 
* P. 524, 
+ “The Shuttleworths of Gawthorpe Hall in the county of Lancaster, 
from September 1582 to October 1621,” edited for the Cheetham Society by 
John Harland (1856-58). 
+ Probably from its cry, as Borlase tells us, for the same reason 
Sanderlings were called in Cornwall Towillees (‘‘ Natural History of Cornwall,” 
p. 247). 
§ Cf. ‘‘ English Dialect Dictionary,” art. digg. 
|| “* Boons,” @.¢., gifts. 
