"With flittering feather sielie doves so from the gosshawk flie."
The manor of Radeclyve in Nottinghamshire was held by the service of "mewing a goshawk;" in the original charter, "mutandi unum estricium" In the romance of Guy earl of Warwick we have,
"Estrich falcons, of great mounde."
Falconers are often called ostregers and ostringers in the old books of falconry, and elsewhere. Estridge for ostrich or ostridge is a corrupt spelling that crept into the language at the commencement of Queen Elizabeth's reign, and it appears that after that period the two words were very often confounded together, and used one for the other.
The explanation of to bate, as cited from Minsheu in one of the notes, cannot apply to ostriches, though it does, very properly, to a bird of prey like the falcon.
After all, there is certainly a line lost, as Mr. Malone has very justly and ingeniously conjectured; but the place should rather seem to have been after the word bath'd, than before. The sense of the old copies, as to what remains, will then be tolerably perspicuous:
"All plum'd like estridges, that with the wind
Bated, like eagles having lately bath'd
* * * * * * *"
i. e. plumed like falcons, which, their feathers being ruffled with the wind, like eagles that have recently bathed, make a violent fluttering noise; the words in Italics being here conjecturally offered as something like the sense of the omitted line.
Scene 1. Page 546.
Ver. I saw young Harry with his beaver on.