FALCONRY. 15 
part of the christian era, but was first introduced into Eng- 
land from the north of Europe during the fourth century. 
In 920 the Emperor Henry was called the fowler on aecount 
of his great fondness for the sport. In the eleventh century 
when Canute, king of Denmark and Norway, ascended the 
English throne, the amusement became more and more prev- 
alent. After the ascension of William of Normandy to the 
English throne, none but persons of the highest rank were 
allowed to keep hawks. The killing of a deer, or boar, or 
even a hare by a serf, was punished with the loss of the 
delinquent's eyes, when the killing of a man could be atoned 
for by paying a moderate sum. In the twelfth century this 
was the favorite recreation of all the kings and nobles of 
Europe. “It was thought sufficient for noblemen’s sons to 
wind the horn, and to carry their hawk fair, and leave.study 
and learning to the children of meaner people." A German 
writer, about the year 1485, complains that "the gentry used 
to take the hawks and hounds to chureh with them, disturb- 
ing the devotions of those religiously inclined, by the 
screams and yells of the birds and beasts." This diversion 
was in so high esteem all over Europe, that Frederic, one of 
the emperors of Germany, thought it not beneath him to 
write a treatise on hawking. In 1481, in the reign of Rich- 
ard III, Juliana Berners, sister of Lord Berners, and prior- 
ess of the nunnery of Sapewell, wrote a tract on faleonry, 
which was loudly applauded by her cotemporaries, and be- 
came what Hoyle has on games,—a standard treatise. In 
1615 and 1619, two works on the same subject were pub- 
lished in London, the former, by Gervase Markham, the 
latter, by Edmund Bert. 
In the thirteenth century the arbitrary law of William, 
then Duke of Normandy, was somewhat modified by King 
John, "allowing every freeman to have his eyries of hawks, - 
faleons, ete., in his own woods." In the fourteenth century, 
Edward III, of England, made it felony to steal a hawk, or 
take the eggs, and "punished the offender by imprisonment 
