MR. .1 E. IIARTING ON HAWKING IN NORFOLK. 
249 
The period covered by these two manuscript collections should 
be here noted. The Gawdy Letters, comprising more than 
1200 documents which have been calendared and indexed by 
Mr. Eye, range in date from a.d. 1509 to 1675, and thus form 
a welcome continuation of the better known county correspondence 
the Paston Letters, the last dated of which was written in 1506 
(ed. Gairdner, vol. iii. p. 403). The Le Neve correspondence 
extends from 1675 to 1743, thus carrying on the records from the 
very year in which the Gawdy correspondence ends. 
As to the family of Gawdy there is little to be told. They were 
long settled at Redonhall and Ilarleston, and are said to have been 
descended from Brews Gawdy who was taken prisoner in 1352, 
and was naturalised and settled in Norfolk. Their crest, a tortoise, 
is certainly a very un-English one, but Mr. Eye informs me that he 
does not find it ascribed to the foreign families of Gaude or Gaudy 
who both bore different arms. 
The first of the family who appears to have been of any note 
was Thomas Gawdy of Ilarleston, a Sergeant-at-law in 1356, 
whoso third wife was Katharine, daughter of Robert L’Estrange, 
and widow of Sir Hugh Hastings. This intermarriage probably 
had the effect of placing the family in a better social position in 
the county. Thomas Gawdy had two sons, both of whom were 
named after him, and one of them, following his father’s pro- 
fession, became like him a Sergeant -at-law. The other marrying 
Anne Bassingbourne had a numerous family, one of whom lived 
to become Sir Francis Gawdy, Lord Chief Justice of the Common 
Pleas. Mr. Eye in a letter to me has remarked, that the family 
may be regarded as “a fair average specimen of the sporting 
squires.” It is now extinct. 
As may well be supposed in a collection of more than twelve 
hundred documents, many extremely interesting entries are to be 
found illustrating the social life of the period ; the formation of 
packs of hounds ; the purchase and exchange of hounds (with 
some intimation of the value set upon them ; the abundance of 
hares “ in the little woods going from Eeepham to Ling,” and of 
foxes ; the great store of pike in Norfolk rivers, and so forth : and 
this is especially the case in regard to the Le Neve correspondence 
presently to be noticed. But as the object of the present 
communication is to supplement what has been already printed 
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