Early Game Laws. 83 



a pheasant, and 10s. a partridge, or one month's imprison- 

 ment, and bound with sureties not to offend again in the 

 Uke kind.' By 1 Jac. I. c. 27, ' No person shall kill or take 

 anj- pheasant, partridge (etc.), or take or destroy the eggs 

 of pheasants, partridges (etc.), in pain of 20s., or imprisonment 

 for every fowl or egg, and to find sureties in £20 not to offend 

 in the like kind.' Under the same statute, no person was 

 permitted ' to buy or sell any pheasant or partridge, upon pain 

 or forfeit of 20s. for every pheasant, and 10s. for every part- 

 ridge.' By 7 Jac. I. c. 11, ' Every person having hawked 

 at or destroyed any pheasant or partridge between the 1st of 

 July and last of August, forfeited 40s. for every time so 

 hawking, and 20s. for every pheasant or partridge so destroyed 

 or taken.' Lords of manors and their servants might take 

 pheasants and partridges in their own grounds or precincts 

 in the daytime between Michaelmas and Christmas. But 

 every person of a mean condition having killed or taken any 

 pheasant or partridge, forfeited 20s. for each one so killed, and 

 had to find surety in £20 not to offend so again." 



For an early notice of the pheasant in Suffolk, namely, in 

 1467, Mr. Harting has referred me to the household expenses 

 of Sir John Howard, Knight, afterwards Duke of Norfolk, 

 edited by Beriah Botfield for the Roxburgh Club, wherein 

 (at p. 399), under the date of April, 1467, at Ipswich, there 

 is the entry : " Item xii. fesawntes pryse xii'." He adds that 

 there is apparently no earlier mention of the pheasant in 

 Norfolk than some reference in the accounts of the 

 L'Estranges at Hunstanton in 1519, and the entry above 

 quoted is the earhest for Suffolk. Mr. Harting further 

 informs me that he has seen an ancient Psalter belonging to 

 Lord Aldenham, in which there is a very fair coloured portrait 

 of a cock pheasant, dated a.d. 1260. 



In Essex the pheasant is mentioned in a bill of fare, 

 A.D. 1059 (as already noticed), and this is apparently 

 the earliest allusion to the bird to be found in any part of 

 England. 



