HAWKING. 
223 
pares him to a dove, that with various turnings and twinings takes 
her flight from the talons of the hawk. In after times, hawking was 
the principal amusement of the English ; a person of rank scarce 
stirred about without a hawk on his hand, which in old paintings is 
the criterion of nobility. Harold, afterwards king of England, when 
he went on an embassy into Normandy, is represented embarking 
with a bird on his fist, and a dog under his arm : and in an ancient 
picture of the nuptials of Henry VI. a nobleman is represented in the 
same manner ; for in those days, it was thought sufficient for noble- 
men to wind their horn, and to carry their hawk fair, and to leave 
study and learning to the children of poor people ! In short, this 
diversion was, among the ancient English, the pride of the rich, and 
the privilege of the poor; no man seems to have been excluded 
the amusement ; we learn from the book of St. Albans, that every 
degree had its peculiar hawk, from the emperor down to the holy- 
water clerk. Vast was the expense that sometimes attended this 
sport. In the reign of James I. Sir Thomas Monion is said to have 
given one thousand pounds for a cast of hawks ; we are not then to 
wonder at the rigoijr of the laws made to preserve a sport that w'as 
carried to such an extravagant pitch. In the 34th of Edward HI. it 
was made felony to steal a hawk ; to take its eggs, even in a person’s 
ow'U ground, was punishable with an imprisonment for a year and a 
day, besides a fine at the king’s pleasure ; in queen Elizabeth’s reign, 
the imprisonment was reduced to three months, but the offender was 
to find security for seven years, or lie in prison till he did. Such 
was the state of Old England : during the whole day, the gentry were 
addicted to hawking or hunting; in the evening they celebrated their 
exploits with the most abandoned and brutish sottishness ; while the 
inferior rank of people, by the most unjust and arbitrary laws, were 
liable to capital punishments, fines, and loss of liberty, for destroying 
the most noxious of the feathered tribe. 
According to Olearius, the diversion of hawking is more followed 
by the Persians and Tartars than ever it was in Europe : “11 n’y avoit 
point de buter,” says he, “ qui n’eust son aigle ou son falcon.” The 
falcons or hawks that were in use in these kingdoms, are now found 
to breed in Wales, in North Britain, and its isles. The penguin fal- 
con inhabits the rocks of Caernarvonshire. The same species, and 
the gyrfalcon, the gentil, and the goshawk, are found in Scotland, and 
the lanner in Ireland. The Norwegian breed was, in old times, in 
high esteem in England, they were thought bribes worthy of a king* 
Geoffrey Fitzpierre gave two good Norway hawks to king John, to 
obtain for his friend, Walter de Madena, one hundred weight of 
cheese; and Nicholas, the Dane, was to give the king a hawk every 
time he came into England, that he might have free liberty to traffic 
throughout the king’s dominions. They were also made the tenures 
by which some nobles held their estates from the crowm. Thus Sir 
John Stanley had a grant of the Isle of Man from Henry IV., to be 
held of the king, his heirs and successors, by homage, and the service 
of two falcons on the day of his or their coronation. And Philip de 
Hasting held his manor of Combertowm, in Cambridgeshire, by the 
service of keeping the king’s falcons. 
