“‘A prayer of Richard Wood, of Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, to Charles II., for restoration to his place as cormorant keeper, which he held, he says, from King James’s first coming to England, to the late wars, in which he served as a soldier, but being now ninety-five years old, has been forced to retire to a dwelling at Walton.’”[152]]
“A document in the State Paper Office, sealed with the royal signet, and addressed to the ‘Treasurer of the Chamber’ for the time being, authorizes him to pay unto John Harris, gentleman, His Majesty’s cormorant keeper, for his repairing yearly unto the north parts of England
to take haggard cormorants for His Majesty’s disport in fishing, the yearly allowance of eighty-four pounds, to be paid on the four usual feasts of the year, during His Majesty’s pleasure, in such manner as John Wood and Robert Wood, or George Hutchinson, gentlemen, formerly received.”[153]
Although Shakespeare has mentioned the cormorant in many of his Plays, he has nowhere alluded to the sport with trained birds; and this is somewhat singular, inasmuch as he has made frequent mention of the then popular pastime of hawking, and he did not die until some years after James I. had made fishing with cormorants a fashionable amusement.[154] The sport has long since ceased to amuse royalty, and by English sportsmen is now almost abandoned.[155]
THE HOME OF THE CORMORANT.
To return to the sea, the true home of the cormorant; that sea
“Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery Neptune.”
Richard II. Act ii. Sc. 1.
“Those who have never observed our boldest coasts,” says Oliver Goldsmith, “have no idea of their tremendous