“Northumberland Household Booh” 
175 
an account of the domestic economy of Percy, Earl of 
Northumberland, was written in the year 1512. It was 
reprinted by Dr. Thomas Percy, Bishop of Dromore, at 
the beginning of the present century. The minuteness 
of the details given as to the price and quantities of 
the articles required renders this and similar collections 
valuable sources of information respecting the luxuries 
and necessaries of the time. Bishop Percy points out, in 
the preface to his edition, that— 
“ Our nobility in the more early times lived in their castles with a 
gross and barbarous magnificence, surrounded with rude and warlike 
followers, without control and without system. As they gradually 
emerged from this barbarity, they found it necessary to establish very 
minute domestic regulations in order to keep their turbulent followers 
in peace and order; and from living in a state of disorderly grandeur, 
void of all system, would naturally enough run into the opposite 
extreme of reducing everything, even the most trifling disbursements, 
to stated formal rules. It may be considered further, that a nobleman 
in the Dark Ages, when retired to his castle, had neither books, nor 
newspapers, nor literary correspondence, nor visits, nor cards, to fill up 
his leisure ; his only amusements were field-sports, and as these, how¬ 
ever eagerly pursued, could not fill up all his vacant hours, the 
government of his household would therefore be likely enough to 
engage his attention.” 
We find from the above work that the list of birds 
reserved exclusively for his lordship’s table includes 
many species which would in modern times be discarded 
as worthless. We see here, spelt in a variety of ways, 
the names of the heron, bittern, peacock, pheasant, par¬ 
tridge, quail, bustard, mallard, woodcock, snipe, lapwing, 
redshank, plover, stint, widgeon, knot, dottrell, reys (or 
ruffs and reeves), seagull, shoveler, curlew, seapye, and 
tern. 
Richard Carew, in his Survey of Cornwall , 1602 
(p. 108), gives a short list of the waterfowl on the Cor¬ 
nish coast:— 
“ Besides these floating burgesses of the ocean, there are also certain 
