To prey at fortune."
Here we have several hawking terms in a single sentence. Haggard, already mentioned, is used as an adjective, meaning wild or lawless. The jesses were straps of leather or silk attached to the foot of the hawk, by which the falconer held her. The bird was whistled off when first set free for flight; and she was always let fly against the wind. If she flew with the wind behind her, she seldom returned. If therefore a hawk was for any reason to be dismissed, she was let down the wind, and from that time shifted for herself and preyed at fortune, or at random.
The legs of the hawk were adorned with two small bells, not both of the same sound but differing by a semitone. They were intended to frighten the game, so that it could be more readily caught. This is alluded to in Lucrece, 511:—
"Harmless Lucretia, marking what he tells
With trembling fear, as fowl hear falcon's bells."
Touchstone also refers to the bells in As You Like It (iii. 3. 81): "As the ox hath his bow, sir, the horse his curb, and the falcon her bells, so man hath his desires." There is another figurative allusion to them in 3 Henry VI. i. 1. 47, where Warwick, boasting of his power, says:—
"Neither the king, nor he that loves him best,
The proudest he that holds up Lancaster,
Dares stir a wing if Warwick shake his bells."