148 
HAWKING. 
Scotland, where excellent Hawks are bred, there was 
an act of parliament claiming them “ to be reserved 
to his majesty, with the falconers’ salaries, according 
to ancient custom and in some parts, there is still 
an old custom observed, of claiming a hen from each 
house, or from a certain number of houses in each 
parish, as due to the royal falconers. They were 
said to have been originally taken as food for the 
king’s Hawks*. 
No amusement seems to have been followed with 
so much eagerness as hawking in almost every 
country in Europe ; and from the earliest times, even 
before William the Conqueror’s days, it was the 
favourite pursuit of the royal families and nobility 
of England. The training and flying of Hawks 
formed part of the education of every young man of 
rank: king Alfred is said to have written a treatise 
upon the subject ; and even ladies followed it as 
eagerly as the gentlemen. The amusement was 
occasionally followed on foot, but, generally, parti- 
cularly on downs and in open countries, it was 
pursued on horseback. In woods and covers, how- 
ever, or where horses could not easily follow, the 
sportsmen were furnished with long stout poles for 
leaping over ditches, which we learn from a story 
told of king Henry the Eighth, who, one day, when 
pursuing his Hawk, at Hitchen, in Hertfordshire, 
attempted, with the assistance of his pole, to jump 
over a wide ditch, full of muddy water, but, the pole 
unfortunately breaking, the king fell, head over ears, 
into the thick mud, where he might have been suffo- 
cated, had not one of his attendants, seeing the 
* Barry’s Orkney . 
