ANTIQUITY OF HAWKING. 
sport.” When Norman Duke William conquered the country, 
hawking still retained all its nobility, and several laws were 
passed which prevented any but the highest in rank and power 
pursuing this sport. Thanks to the weak and vacillating 
character of King John, things did not last longer in this 
manner than the reign of that monarch ; and, amongst other 
important privileges wrested from him, was the Forest Char- 
ter, which enabled all freemen to fly their own hawks and 
keep their heronries on the banks of their own rivers. Still it 
remained felony to steal a falcon or its eggs (i. e. from a free- 
man’s own woods), and a term of imprisonment, not exceeding 
a year and a day, was thought sufficient punishment for the 
latter heinous offence. 
From a little transaction that took place between Geoffrey 
Fitzpercie and King John, we can at once see the importance 
of this sport, — the former presenting his royal master with a 
brace of falcons, in consideration of his friend, Walter de 
Moclin, being allowed to export a hundredweight of cheese; 
seeing the latter must then have been of some value, we cannot 
but suppose that King J ohn had less than its equivalent worth 
in the brace of falcons. We are further informed, that the same 
royal personage received a hawk from Nicholas the Dane, in 
return for the king’s permission to trade throughout his 
dominions. In Edward the Third’s reign a law was passed 
to the effect, that if any person should find a goshawk, he 
should deliver it to the sheriff of that county in which the 
bird was found, who was to advertise the hawk for the space 
of four months ; at the expiration of that period, if the finder 
was legally entitled to the possession of a hawk, it should be 
given up to him ; if not, the bird remained in the possession of 
the sheriff. 
In the reign of Henry YII. it was enacted, that if any 
man should take the eggs out of a hawk or falcon’s nest, he 
should be imprisoned for a year and a day, and suffer any 
pecuniary fine the king might please to inflict; — one half of 
the money to go to the royal coffers and the other half to the 
owners of the estate robbed. If a man destroyed hawks’ eggs 
on his own estate, the same pains and penalties were in store 
for him ; but whether in such a case half the fine was returned 
to the offender is not stated. 
Henry YIII. was equally solicitous of the welfare of his 
falconry. His bluff bigamous majesty was passionately fond 
of hawking ; so fond, indeed, that on one occasion it bade fan* 
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