162 MR. T. SOUTHWELL ON THE BREEDING OF THE CRANE. 
he brought down nine of these fine birds, whereat the king, as in 
duty bound, was greatly pleased. In 1298, Edward I. received 
three Cranes also killed with the Gyrfalcon in Cambridgeshire. 
These early records all refer to the Crane from the sportsman’s 
point of view, and indicate the esteem in which it was held as the 
noblest quarry at which, in this country, the Falconer could fly 
his Hawks ; but the next record is of a very different character, 
and although it shows that the Crane at that time frequented 
this country in considerable numbers (for we can hardly imagine 
they were imported from the Continent), it has a melancholy 
import as foreshadowing the inevitable result of such wholesale 
slaughter, for we are told by Leland, in an oft-quoted passage, 
that at the enthronisation of Archbishop Neville, in the reign of 
Edward IV. (1461 — 83), two hundred and four Cranes were 
included in the bill of fare at the grand banquet which followed. 
Cranes are also mentioned in the Household-book of the fifth Earl 
of Northumberland in 1512, as desirable to be had for my Lordes 
own mees at Christmas and other principal feasts, “ so they be 
boght at xvj d. a pece;”* and this brings us to our own county, 
and to an important era in the history of the Crane in East Anglia. 
In the muniment room at Hunstanton Hall there exists a record 
of “ the Household and Privy Purse Accounts ” of the ancient 
family of the Le Stranges, kept during the years 1519 to 1578, 
a transcript of which was communicated to the Society of Anti- 
quaries by the late Mr. Daniel Gurney, and was printed in the 
25th volume of ‘ Archaeologia,’ p. 529 et seq. Here there are 
five entries referring to Cranes between the years 1519 and 1533. 
The first entry in 1519 is merely in the following words : “Itm. pd. 
for a Crane and vi. Plovs xx d. ; ” the second refers to a Crane sent 
in with other provisions as “ of gyste,” or in lieu of rent ; the third, 
in December, 1526, is stated to have been killed with a crossbow ; 
for the delivery of the fourth, in September, 1533, a reward of 
vj d. was paid ; and in December of the same year we meet with 
the last entry as follows : “ Itm. a Cranne kyllyd w* the Gun.” 
Hitherto the wild birds and beasts had only the hawk, the snare, 
and the cross-bow to contend against, but a new era had dawned 
with the introduction of the gun, and although perhaps the evil 
* Northumb. Househ. 13k. p. 104. 
