194 
SAT, MON. 
that for several centuries, claimed and allowed to the Abbot of 
St. Peters in Westminster, on the plea that when Saint Peter, 
according to the legend, had come and consecrated that church, 
he made a grant to the convent of the tithe of all the Salmon 
caught in the Thames, to the same extent as the present juris- 
diction of the Lord Mayor j which is from Yantlett creek to 
the bridge at Staines; and among the many causes that have 
been assigned for the scarcity of Salmon in the Thames in more 
modern times, not the least of them was believed to be, that 
the fishermen had left olF making this accustomed offering. A 
cause not altogether unlike the above has also been assigned by 
Dr. Boate, in his “Natural History of Ireland,” for the diminished 
quantity of Salmon in that country. He says that before the 
Revolution in the year 1688, this fish was plentiful and cheap; 
but since that event, to which this author ascribes all the natural 
calamities of his country, gentlemen have complained that Salmon 
had become scarce and dear; but he does not add that the 
fishermen complained of not obtaining greater success or better 
remuneration. 
That in the reign of Elizabeth a Salmon at table was 
accounted a matter of fashion, in which a person of ordinary 
rank might be tempted to ape the rich and the great, appears 
from a scene in the tragedy of “'Othello,” although it seems 
incongruous to place the reference in the mouth of one to 
whom the fish could scarcely have been known; but it is 
represented as an instance of good sense in a woman, that in 
her wisdom she was never so frail as to change the more 
useful although homely Cod’s head at her table for the tail 
of the fashionable Salmon. But the piice of Salmon rose 
gradually in different parts of the kingdom, and Avith it the 
rents of the larger fisheries in the north of England and Scot- 
land, until the latter have amounted to a princely income. So 
long since as about the year 1730, I find in a MS. Journal 
that in the market at Plymouth two pounds of Salmon and 
fifty shrimps (prawns) were purchased at the cost of six shillings; 
but as a contrast to this, I find in the same Journal, with the 
date of 1761, “The Saltash fishermen, with two nets, catch'd 
eighty-five Salmon over against M^arren Point; forty- five in 
one net and forty in the other; they may not have such 
another draught tor the Avhole summer. For two of these 
