16 
bidcock, [water-rail], redshank, bittern, and wild goose : among 
such as flying feed, the sea-mere, sea-pie, guU, curlew, cormorant, 
and osprey,’ ” (Camden’s Britannia, Gough’s Edition, 1806, vol. ii, 
pp. 380, 1). In another place, speaking of Crowland, he tells us : 
“Their greatest gain is from the fish and wild ducks that they 
catch, which are so many, that in August they can drive into a 
single net 3000 ducks ; they call these pools their corn-fields ; for 
there is no corn grows within five miles.” 
In addition to occasional scraps of information which come to 
light, often presenting themselves in strange forms, such for 
instance as a “ bill of fare ” at some great feast, — we fortunately 
possess two very valuable records, one the “ L’Estrange Household 
Book,” kept during the years 1519 to 1578 ; and the other, — the 
most valuable of all our local records of the past, — a paper by Sir 
Thomas Brown, referring to a period about a hundred and fifty 
years later, and giving an account of the birds found in Norfolk 
in his time ; his known accuracy and keen-sightedness render 
this list perfectly trustworthy so far as it goes, and a most welcome 
legacy to modern ornithologists. 
First in point of date comes “ the household and privy purse 
accounts of the L’Estranges of Hunstanton,” kept during the 
reigns of Henry the Eighth and his children, from 1519 to 1578, 
communicated to the Society of Antiquaries by Mr. Daniel Gurney 
of North Euncton, in 1833. This curious record of the expendi- 
ture in the house of one of the “ better sort of gentry,” when 
Henry the Eighth filled the throne, is full of all sorts of antiqua- 
rian interest, but its great attraction to us consists in the entries 
containing the names of the wild birds supplied for the use of the 
household, with the price paid for them, or the rewards given to 
the servants who brought them as presents from the neighbouring 
gentry, and often specifying the mode by which they were pro- 
cured, — as by hawking, the cross-bow, or the gun. In those days 
the landed gentry depended almost entirely upon home supply for 
provisioning their establishments, and as most of their out-door 
servants were boarded in the house, no small quantity was required 
to supply those patriarchal abodes.* Provision seems to have been 
* On festive occasions the quantity of provisions provided was prodigious ; 
take for example a feast given on the occasion of the “ intronazation ” of N evell. 
Archbishop of York, in Edward IV’s reign : Among the goodly provision 
