The following curious fact is mentioned in a communication on the cleanliness of animals.—(Jour. Roy. Institution, No. II.) “Walking one day along the shore of Holy Island, off the coast of Northumberland, I disturbed an ash-coloured sanderling (Calidris islandica, Steph.), which flew heedlessly, and as if injured. On shooting the bird, I found that it was covered with vermin, more especially about the head; so much so, that the poor thing must have fallen a victim to their tormenting ravages. On further examination, I found that it had lost one of its legs, so that it was from its incapability to rid itself of these insects that their extraordinary increase was to be attributed. Poultry (the same naturalist remarks) which run about in stony or paved yards, wear away the points of their claws by friction and digging, which renders them unfit to penetrate their coating of feathers; they are, therefore, more covered with vermin, and, in consequence, more sickly than fowls from the country.”—Ainsworth.
Clergy, s. A man in holy orders, not a laic.
The propensity of the clergy to follow the secular pastimes, and especially those of hunting and hawking, is frequently reprobated by the poets and moralists of the former times. Chaucer, in his Canterbury Tales, makes the monk much better skilled in riding and hunting, than in divinity. The same poet, afterwards, in the Ploughman’s Tale, takes occasion to accuse the monks of pride, because they rode on coursers like knights, having their hawks and hounds with them. In the same tale he severely reproaches the priests for their dissolute manners, saying, that many of them thought more upon hunting with their dogs, and blowing the horn, than of the service they owed to God.
The bishops and abbots of the middle ages hunted with great state, having a large train of retainers and servants; and some of them are recorded for their skill in this fashionable pursuit. Walter, bishop of Rochester, who lived in the thirteenth century, was an excellent hunter, and so fond of the sport, that at the age of fourscore he made hunting his sole employment, to the total neglect of the duties of his office. In the succeeding century an abbot of Leicester surpassed all the sportsmen of the time in the art of hare-hunting; and even when these dignitaries were travelling from place to place, upon affairs of business, they usually had both hounds and hawks in their train. Fitzstephen assures us, that Thomas à Becket, being sent as ambassador from Henry II. to the court of France, assumed the state of a secular potentate; and took with him dogs and hawks of various sorts, such as were used by kings and princes.
At the time of the Reformation, the see of Norwich, only, was in the possession of no less than thirteen parks, well stocked with deer and other animals for the chase. At the end of a book of Homilies in MS., in the Cotton Library, written about the reign of Henry VI., is a poem containing instructions to priests in general, and requiring them, among other things, not to engage in “hawkynge, huntynge, and dawnsynge.”—Strutt.
Clew, s. Thread wound upon a button; a guide.
Click, v. To make a sharp, successive noise.
Cliff, or Clift, s. A steep rock, a rock.
Clip, v. To cut with shears; to curtail, to cut short.
Clipping, s. The part cut or clipped off; an operation performed on rough or long-coated horses. Of its benefits and disadvantages very contrary opinions have been given.