Shakspeare and His Times [Vol. 1 of 2] / Including the Biography of the Poet; criticisms on his genius and writings; a new chronology of his plays; a disquisition on the on the object of his sonnets; and a history of the manners, customs, and amusements, superstitions, poetry, and elegant literature of his age

by Nathan Drake

———— "youthful gay,

Like eyas-hawke, up mounts into the skies,

His newly budded pinions to essay."[271:E]

If the commencement of the seventeenth century, saw Hawking the most splendid and prevalent amusement of the nobility and gentry, the close had to witness its decline and abolition; it gave way to a more sure and expeditious, though, perhaps, less interesting mode of killing game, and the adoption of the gun had, before the year 1700, almost entirely banished the art of the Falconer.

The costume of the next great amusement of the country, that of Hunting, differs at present in few essential points from what it was in the sixteenth century. The chief variations may be included in the disuse of killing game in inclosures, and in the adoption of more speed, and less fatigue and stratagem in the open chace; or in other words, it is the strength and speed of the fleet blood-horse, and not of the athletic and active huntsman, or old steady-paced hunter, that now decide the sport. "In the modern chace," observes Mr Haslewood, "the lithsomness of youth is no longer excited to pursue the animals. Attendant footmen are discontinued and forgotten; while the active and eager rustic with a hunting pole, wont to be foremost, has long forsaken the field, nor is there a trace of the character known, except in a country of deep clay, as parts of Sussex. Few years will pass ere the old steady paced English hunter and the gabbling beagle will be equally obsolete. All the sport now consists of speed. A hare is hurried to death by dwarf fox-hounds, and a leash murdered in a shorter period than a single one could generally struggle for existence. The hunter boasts a cross of blood, or, in plainer phrase, a racer, sufficiently professed to render a country sweepstakes doubtful. This variation is by no means an improvement, and can only advantage the plethoric citizen, who seeks to combat the somnolency arising from civic festivals by a short and sudden excess of exercise."[272:A]

The mode of hunting, indeed, in the reigns of Elizabeth and James, still continued an emblem of, and a fit preparation for, the fatigues of

war; nor was it unusual to consider the toils of the chace as initiatory to those of the camp. "The old Lord Gray, our English Achilles," says Peacham, "when hee was Deputie of Ireland, to inure his sonnes for the warre, would usually in the depth of winter, in frost, snow, raine, and what weather so ever fell, cause them at midnight to be raised out of their beds, and carried abroad on hunting till the next morning; then perhaps come wet and cold home, having for a breakefast, a browne loafe and a mouldie cheese, or (which is ten times worse) a dish of Irish butter[273:A];" and Dekkar, in his praise of hunting, remarks, that "it is a very true picture of warre, nay, it is a warre in itselfe, for engines are brought into the field, stratagems are contrived, ambushes are laide, onsets are given, alarams strucke up, brave encounters are made, fierce assailings are resisted by strength, by courage, or by policie: the enemie is pursued, and the pursuers never give over till they have him in execution, then is a retreate sounded, then are spoiles divided, then come they home wearied, but yet crowned with honour and victorie. And as in battailes, there bee several manners of fight; so in the pastime of hunting, there are several degrees of game. Some hunt the lyon, &c.—others pursue the long-lived hart, the couragious stag, or the nimble footed deere; these are the noblest hunters, and they exercise the noblest game: these by following the chace, get strength of bodie, a free, and undisquieted minde, magnanimitie of spirit, alacritie of heart, and unwearisomnesse to breake through the hardest labours: their pleasures are not insatiable, but are contented to be kept within limits, for these hunt within parkes inclosed, or within bounded forests. The hunting of the hare teaches feare to be bold, and puts simplicitie to her shifts, that she growes cunning and provident; &c."[273:B]

Hunting in inclosures, that is, in parks, chases, and forests, where the game was inclosed with a fence-work of netting stretched on posts driven into the ground, appears to have been the custom of this

country from the time of Edward the Second to the middle of the seventeenth century. The manuscript treatise of William Twici, grand huntsman to Edward the Second, entitled Le Art De Venerie, le quel maistre Guillame Twici venour le roy d'Angleterre fist en son temps per aprandre Autres[274:A]; the nearly contemporary manuscript translation of John Gyfford, with the title of A book of Venerie, dialogue[274:B] wise; the tract called The Maistre of the Game[274:C], in manuscript also, and written by the chief huntsman of Henry the Fourth, for the instruction of his son, afterwards Henry the Fifth; the Book of St. Albans, the first printed treatise on the subject, and written by the sister of Lord Berners, when prioress at the nunnery of Sopewell, about 1481; the tract on the Noble Art of Venerie, annexed to Turberville on Falconrie 1575, and supposed to have been written by George Gascoigne, and the re-impression of the same in 1611, all describe the ceremonies and preparations necessary for the pursuit of this, now obsolete, mode of hunting, which, from its luxury and effeminacy, forms a perfect contrast to the manly fatigues of the open chace.

This style of hunting, indeed, exhibited great splendour and pomp, and was certainly a very imposing spectacle; but the slaughter must have been easy and great, and the sport therefore proportionally less interesting. When the king, the great barons, or dignified clergy, selected this mode of the diversion, in which either bows or greyhounds were used, the masters of the game and the park-keepers prepared all things essential for the purpose; and, if it were a royal hunt, the sheriff of the county furnished stabling for the king's horses, and carts for the dead game. A number of temporary buildings, covered with green boughs, to shade the company from the heat of the sun or bad weather, were erected by the foresters in a proper situation, and on the morning of the day chosen for the sport, the master of the game and his officers saw the greyhounds duly placed, and a person