In Doomsday-book, a hawk's airy [202] is returned among the most valuable articles of property; which proves the high estimation these birds were held in at the commencement of the Norman government; and probably some establishment, like that above mentioned, was made for the royal falconer in England.
V.—FONDNESS OF EDWARD III. &c. FOR HAWKING.
Edward III., according to Froissart, had with him in his army when he invaded France, thirty falconers on horseback, who had charge of his hawks; [203] and every day he either hunted, or went to the river [204] for the purpose of hawking, as his fancy inclined him. From the frequent mention that is made of hawking by the water-side, not only by the historians, but also by the romance writers of the middle ages, I suppose that the pursuit of water-fowls afforded the most diversion. The author last quoted, speaking of the earl of Flanders, says, he was always at the river, [205] where his falconer cast off one falcon after the heron, and the earl another. In the poetical romance of the "Squire of low Degree," the king of Hungary promises his daughter, that, at her return from hunting, she should hawk by the river-side, with gos hawk, gentle falcon, and other well-tutored birds; [206] so also Chaucer, in the rhime of sir Thopas, says that he could hunt the wild deer,
And ryde on haukynge by the ryver,
With grey gos hawke in hande. [207]
An anonymous writer, of the seventeenth century, records the following anecdote: "Sir Thomas Jermin, going out with his servants, and brooke hawkes one evening, at Bury, [208] they were no sooner abroad, but fowle were found, and he called out to one of his falconers, Off with your jerkin: the fellow being into the wind [209] did not heare him; at which he stormed, and still cried out, Off with your jerkin, you knave, off with your jerkin: now it fell out that there was, at that instant, a plaine townsman of Bury, in a freeze jerkin, stood betwixt him and his falconer, who seeing sir Thomas in such a rage, and thinking he had spoken to him, unbuttoned himself amaine, threw off his jerkin, and besought his worshippe not to be offended, for he would off with his doublet too, to give him content." [210]
6. Saxon Hawking—IX. Century.
This engraving represents a Saxon nobleman and his falconer, with their hawks, upon the bank of a river, waiting for the rising of the game. The delineation is from a Saxon manuscript written at the close of the ninth century, or at the commencement of the tenth; in the Cotton Library. [211] Another drawing upon the same subject, with a little variation, occurs in a Saxon manuscript, somewhat more modern. [212] The two following engravings are from drawings in a manuscript, written early in the fourteenth century, preserved in the Royal Library. [213] We see a party of both sexes hawking by the water side; the falconer is frightening the fowls to make their rise, and the hawk is in the act of seizing upon one of them. [214]