The practice of hawking declined, from the moment the musket was brought to perfection, which pointing out a method more ready and more certain of procuring game, and, at the same time, affording an equal degree of air and exercise, the immense expense of training, and maintaining of hawks became altogether unnecessary; it was therefore no wonder that the assistance of the gun superseded that of the bird; or that the art of hawking, when rendered useless, should be laid aside. Its fall was very rapid. Hentzner, who wrote his Itinerary A. D. 1598, assures us that hawking was the general sport of the English nobility; at the same time, most of the best treatises upon this subject were written. At the commencement of the seventeenth century, it seems to have been in the zenith of its glory. At the close of the same century, the sport was rarely practised, and a few years afterwards hardly known.

VIII.—METHOD OF HAWKING.

Hawking was performed on horseback, or on foot, as occasion required. On horseback, when in the fields, and open country; and on foot, when in the woods and coverts. In following the hawk on foot, it was usual for the sportsman to have a stout pole with him, to assist him in leaping over little rivulets and ditches, which might otherwise prevent him in his progress; and this we learn from an historical fact related by Hall; who informs us, that Henry VIII. pursuing his hawk on foot, at Hitchen in Hertfordshire, attempted, with the assistance of his pole, to jump over a ditch that was half full of muddy water, the pole broke, and the king fell with his head into the mud, where he would have been stifled had not a footman, named John Moody, who was near at hand, and seeing the accident, leaped into the ditch, and released his majesty from his perilous situation; "and so," says the honest historian, "God of hys goodnesse preserved him." [217]

IX.—CAPARISON OF A HAWK.

When the hawk was not flying at her game, she was usually hood-winked, with a cap or hood provided for that purpose, and fitted to her head; and this hood was worn abroad, as well as at home. All hawks taken upon "the fist," the term used for carrying them upon the hand, had straps of leather called jesses, put about their legs. The jesses were made sufficiently long for the knots to appear between the middle and the little fingers of the hand that held them, so that the lunes, or small thongs of leather, might be fastened to them with two tyrrits, or rings; and the lunes were loosely wound round the little finger. It appears that sometimes the jesses were of silk. Lastly, their legs were adorned with bells, fastened with rings of leather, each leg having one; and the leathers, to which the bells were attached, were denominated bewits; and to the bewits was added the creance, or long thread, by which the bird in tutoring, was drawn back, after she had been permitted to fly; and this was called the reclaiming of the hawk. The bewits, we are informed, were useful to keep the hawk from "winding when she bated," that is, when she fluttered her wings to fly after her game.

Respecting the bells, it is particularly recommended that they should not be too heavy, to impede the flight of the bird; and that they should be of equal weight, sonorous, shrill, and musical; not both of one sound, but the one a semitone below the other; [218] they ought not to be broken, especially in the sounding part, because, in that case, the sound emitted would be dull and unpleasing. There is, says the Book of Saint Albans, great choice of sparrow-hawk bells, and they are cheap enough; but for gos-hawk bells, those made at Milan are called the best; and, indeed, they are excellent; for they are commonly sounded with silver, and charged for accordingly. But we have good bells brought from Dordreght (Dort), which are well paired, and produce a very shrill, but pleasant sound.

I am told, that silver being mixed with the metal when the bells are cast, adds much to the sweetness of the tone; and hence probably the allusion of Shakespear, when he says,

How silver sweet sound lovers' tongues by night.

I cannot help adding in this place a passage from an old play, written by Thomas Heywood; wherein one of the characters, speaking of a hawk flying, says

Her bels, Sir Francis, had not both one waight.