Chapter VIII

Chapter VIII

VIEW OF COUNTRY LIFE DURING THE AGE OF SHAKSPEARE CONTINUED—DIVERSIONS.

The attempt to describe all the numerous rural diversions which were prevalent during the age of Shakspeare, would be, in the highest degree, superfluous; for the greatest part of them, it is evident, must remain, with such slight or gradual modification as to require but little notice. It will be, therefore, our endeavour, in the course of this chapter, after giving a catalogue of the principal country-diversions of the era in question, to dwell only upon those which are now either entirely obsolete, or which have subsequently undergone such alterations as to render their former state an object of novelty and curiosity.

This catalogue may be taken, with tolerable accuracy, from Randal Holme of Chester, and from Robert Burton; the former enumerating the games and diversions of the sixteenth century, and the latter those of the prior part of the seventeenth. If to these, we add the notices to be drawn from Shakspeare, the sketch will, there is reason to suppose, prove sufficiently extensive.

In the list of Randal Holme will be found the names of some juvenile sports, which are now perhaps no longer explicable; this poetical antiquary, however, shall speak for himself.

"—— They dare challenge for to throw the sledge; To jumpe or lepe over ditch or hedge; To wrastle, play at stool-balle, or to runne; To pitch the barre or to shote offe the gunne; To play at loggets, nineholes, or ten pinnes; To trye it out at fote balle by the shinnes; At ticke tacke, seize noddy, maw, or ruffe; Hot-cockles, leape froggè, or blindman's buffe; To drinke the halfer pottes, or deale att the whole canne; To playe at chesse, or pue, and inke-horènne; To daunce the morris, playe at barley breake; At alle exploytes a man can thynke or speake; Att shove-grote, 'venter poynte, att crosse and pyle; Att "Beshrewe him that's last att any style;" Att lepynge over a Christmàs bon fyer, Or att the "drawynge dame owte o' the myre;" At "Shoote cock, Gregory," stoole-ball, and what not: Pickè-poynt, top, and scourge to make him hot."[247:A]

Burton, after mentioning Hawking, Hunting, Fowling, and Fishing, says, "many other sports and recreations there be, much in use, as ringing, holding, shooting, (with the bow,) keelpins, tronks, coits, pitching bars, hurling, wrestling, leaping, running, fencing, mustring, swimming, wasters, foiles, foot-ball, balown, quintan, &c., and many such which are the common recreations of the Country folks."[247:B] He subsequently adds bull and bear baiting as common to both countrymen and[247:C] citizens, and then subjoins to the list of rural amusements, dancing, singing, masking, mumming, and stage-players.[247:D] For the ordinary recreations of Winter as well in the country as in town, he recommends "cards, tables and dice, shovelboord, chess-play, the philosopher's game, small trunks, shuttle-cock, balliards, musick, masks, singing, dancing, ule games, frolicks, jests, riddles, catches, purposes, questions and commands, and merry tales."[247:E]

From this statement it will immediately appear, that many of the rural diversions of this period are those likewise of the present day, and that no large portion of the catalogue can with propriety call for a more extended notice.

At the head of those which demand some brief elucidation, we shall place the Itinerant Stage, a country amusement, however, which, in the days of Elizabeth, was fast degenerating into contempt. The performance of secular plays by strolling companies of minstrels, had been much encouraged for two or three centuries, not only by the vulgar, but by the nobility, into whose castles and halls they were gladly admitted, and handsomely rewarded. At the commencement of the sixteenth century, the custom was still common, and Mr. Steevens, as a proof of it, has furnished us with the following entry from the fifth Earl of Northumberland's Household Book, which was begun in the year 1512:—

"Rewards to Players.

"Item, to be payd to the said Richard Gowge and Thomas Percy for rewards to players for playes playd in Chrystinmas by stranegers in my house after xxd. every play by estimacion somme xxxiijs. iiijd. Which ys appoynted to be paid to the said Richard Gowge and Thomas Percy at the said Christynmas in full contentacion of the said reward ys xxxiijs. iiijd."[248:A]

That these itinerants were still occasionally admitted into the country-mansions of the great, during the reign of Elizabeth, we have satisfactory evidence; but it may be sufficient here to remark, that Elizabeth herself was entertained with an historical play at Kenelworth Castle, by performers who came for that purpose from Coventry; and that Shakspeare has favoured us with another instance, by the introduction of the following scene in his Taming of the Shrew, supposed to have been written in 1594:—

"Lord. Sirrah, go see what trumpet 'tis that sounds:— Exit Servant. Belike, some noble gentleman; that means, Travelling some journey, to repose him here.— Re-enter a Servant. How now? who is it?

Serv. An it please your honour, Players that offer service to your lordship.

Lord. Bid them come near:—

Enter Players.

Now, fellows, you are welcome.

1 Play. We thank your honour.

Lord. Do you intend to stay with me to night?

2 Play. So please your lordship to accept our duty.

Lord. With all my heart.— Go, sirrah, take them to the buttery, And give them friendly welcome every one: Let them want nothing that my house affords."[249:A]

From this passage it may be deduced, that the itinerant players of this period were held in no higher estimation than menial servants; an inference which is corroborated by referring to the anonymous play of A Taming of a Shrew, written about 1590, where the entry of the players is thus marked, "Enter two of the plaiers, with packs at their backs." The abject condition of these strollers, Mr. Pope has attributed, perhaps too hastily, to the stationary performers of this reign; "the top of the profession," he observes, "were then mere players, not gentlemen of the stage; they were led into the buttery by the steward, not placed at the lord's table, or the lady's[249:B] toilette;" a passage on which Mr. Malone has remarked, that Pope "seems not to have observed, that the players here introduced are strollers; and there is no reason to suppose that our author, Heminge, Burbage, Condell, &c. who were licensed by King James, were treated in this manner."[249:C]

On the other hand Mr. Steevens supports the opinion of Pope by asserting, that "at the period when this comedy (Taming of a Shrew) was written, and for many years after, the profession of a player was scarcely allowed to be reputable. The imagined dignity," he continues, "of those who did not belong to itinerant companies, is, therefore, unworthy consideration. I can as easily believe that the blundering editors of the first folio were suffered to lean their hands on Queen Elizabeth's chair of state, as that they were admitted to the table of the Earl of Leicester, or the toilette of Lady Hunsden. Like Stephen, in Every Man in his Humour, the greatest indulgence our histrionic leaders could have expected, would have been a trencher and a napkin in the buttery."[250:A]

The inference, however, which Mr. Malone has drawn, appears to have the authority of Shakspeare himself; for when Hamlet is informed of the arrival of the players, he exclaims, "How chances it, they travel; their residence, both in reputation and profit, was better both ways[250:B];" a question, the drift of which even Mr. Steevens explains in the following words. "How chances it they travel?—i. e. How happens it that they are become strollers?—Their residence, both in reputation and profit, was better both ways—i. e. To have remained in a settled theatre was the more honourable as well as the more lucrative situation."[250:C] We have every reason, therefore, to suppose, that the difference between the stroller and the licensed performer was in Shakspeare's time considerable; and that the latter, although not the companion of lords and countesses, was held in a very respectable light, if his personal conduct were good, and became the occasional associate of the first literary characters of the age; while the former was frequently degraded beneath the rank of a servant, and, in the statute, indeed, 39 Eliz. ch. 4. he is classed with rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars.

This depreciation of the character of the itinerant player, towards the close of Elizabeth's reign, soon narrowed his field of action; the opulent became unwilling to admit into their houses persons thus legally branded; and the stroller was reduced to the necessity of exhibiting his talents at wakes and fairs, on temporary scaffolds and barrel heads; "if he pen for thee once," says Ben Jonson, addressing a strolling player, "thou shalt not need to travell, with thy pumps full of gravell, any more, after a blinde jade and a hamper, and stalk upon boards and barrel-heads to an old crackt trumpet."[250:D]

Many country-towns, indeed, at this period, were privileged to hold fairs by exhibiting a certain number of stage-plays at their annual fairs. Of these, Manningtree in Essex was one of the most celebrated; Heywood mentions it as notorious for yearly plays at its fair[251:A]; and that its festivity on these occasions was equally known, is evident from Shakspeare's comparison of Falstaff to a "roasted Manningtree ox with a pudding in his belly."[251:B] The histrionic fame of Manningtree Mr. Malone proves by two quotations from Nashe and Decker; the former exclaiming in a poem, called The choosing of Valentines,

——— "Or see a play of strange moralitie, Shewen by bachelrie of Manning-tree, Whereto the countrie franklins flock-meale swarme;"

and the latter observing, in a tract entitled Seven deadly Sinnes of London, 1607, that "Cruelty has got another part to play; it is acted like the old morals at Manningtree."[251:C]

This custom of stage-playing at annual fairs continued to support a few itinerant companies; but in general, after the halls of the nobility and gentry were shut against them[251:D], they divided into small parties of three or four, and at length became mere jugglers, jesters, and puppet-show exhibitors. This last-mentioned amusement, indeed, and its professors, seem to have been known, in this country, under the name of motions, and motion-men, as early as the commencement of the sixteenth century[252:A]; and the term, indeed, continued to be thus applied in the time of Jonson, who repeatedly uses it, in his Bartholomew Fair.[252:B] The degradation of the STROLLING companies, by the statutes of Elizabeth and James, rendered the exhibition of automaton figures, at this period, common throughout the kingdom. They are alluded to by Shakspeare under the appellation of drolleries; thus in the Tempest, Alonzo, alarmed at the strange shapes bringing in the banquet, exclaims

"Give us kind keepers, heavens! What were these?"

a question to which Sebastian replies,

"A LIVING drollery,"[252:C]

meaning by this epithet to distinguish them from the wooden puppets, the performers in the shows called drolleries.

A very popular annual diversion was celebrated, during the age of Shakspeare, and for more than twenty-five years after, on the Cotswold Hills in Gloucestershire. It has been said that the rural games which constituted this anniversary, were founded by one Robert Dover on the accession of James I.;[252:D] but it appears to be ascertained that Dover was only the reviver, with additional splendour, of sports which had been yearly exhibited, at an early period, on the same spot, and perhaps only discontinued for a short time before their revival in 1603. "We may learn from Rudder's History of Glocestershire," says Mr. Chalmers, "that, in more early times, there was at Cottswold a customary meeting, every year, at Whitsontide, called an ale, or Whitson-ale, which was attended by all the lads, and the lasses, of the villegery, who, annually, chose a Lord and Lady of the Yule, who were the authorized rulers of the rustic revellers. There is in the Church of Cirencester, says Rudder, an ancient monument, in basso relievo, that evinces the antiquity of those games, which were known to Shakspeare, before the accession of King James. They were known, also, to Drayton early in that reign: for upon the map of Glocestershire, which precedes the fourteenth song, there is a representation of a Whitsun-ale, with a may pole, which last is inscribed 'Heigh for Cotswold.'

"Ascending, next, faire Cotswold's plaines, She revels with the Shepherd's swaines."[253:A]

Mr. Strutt also is of opinion that the Cotswold games had a much higher origin than the time of Dover, and observes that they are evidently alluded to in the following lines by John Heywood the epigrammatist:

"He fometh like a bore, the beaste should seeme bolde, For he is as fierce as a lyon of Cotswold."[253:B]

In confirmation of these statements it may be added, that Mr. Steevens and Mr. Chalmers have remarked, that in Randolph's poems, 1638, is to be found "An eclogue on the noble assemblies revived on Cotswold hills by Mr. Robert Dover;" and in D'Avenant's poems published the same year, a copy of verses "In celebration of the yearely preserver of the games at Cotswold."[253:C]

The Reviver of these far-famed games was an enterprising attorney, a native of Barton on the Heath in Warwickshire, and consequently a near neighbour to Shakspeare's country-residence. He obtained permission from King James to be the director of these annual sports, which he superintended in person for forty years. They were resorted to by prodigious multitudes of people, and by all the nobility and gentry for sixty miles round, until "the rascally rebellion," to adopt the phraseology of Anthony Wood, "was begun by the Presbyterians, which gave a stop to their proceedings, and spoiled all that was generous and ingenious elsewhere."[254:A]

They consisted originally, and previous to the direction of Dover, merely of athletic exercises, such as wrestling, leaping, cudgel-playing, sword and buckler fighting, pitching the bar, throwing the sledge, tossing the pike, &c. &c. To these Dover added coursing for the gentlemen and dancing for the ladies; a temporary castle of boards being erected for the accommodation of the fair sex, and a silver collar adjudged as a prize for the fleetest greyhound.

To these two eras of the Cotswold Games Shakspeare alludes in the second part of King Henry IV., and in the Merry Wives of Windsor. Justice Shallow refers to the original state of this diversion, when in the first of these dramas he enumerates among the swinge-bucklers, "Will Squeele, a Cotsole man[254:B];" and to Dover's improvement of them, when, in the second, he represents Slender asking Page, "How does your fallow greyhound, Sir? I heard say, he was out-run on Cotsale."[254:C]

Dover, tradition says, was highly delighted with the superintendance of these Games, and assumed, during his direction of them, a great deal of state and consequence. "Captain Dover," relates Granger, a title which courtesy had probably bestowed on this public-spirited attorney, "had not only the permission of James I. to celebrate the Cotswold Games, but appeared in the very cloaths which that monarch had formerly worn[254:D], and with much more dignity in his air and aspect."[254:E]

In 1636, there was published at London a small quarto, entitled, "Annalia Dubrensia, upon the yearly Celebration of Mr. Robert Dover's Olympic Games, upon Cotswold Hills," a book consisting entirely of recommendatory verses, written by Jonson, Drayton, Randolph, and many others, and with a print prefixed of Dover on horseback.

It is probable that, at this period, and for many subsequent years, there were several places in the kingdom which had Games somewhat similar to those of Cotswold, though not quite so celebrated; for Heath says, that a carnival of this kind was kept every year, about the middle of July, upon Halgaver-moor, near Bodwin in Cornwall; "resorted to by thousands of people. The sports and pastimes here held were so well liked," he relates, "by Charles the Second, when he touched here in his way to Sicily, that he became a brother of the jovial society. The custom," he adds, "of keeping this Carnival is said to be as old as the Saxons."[255:A]

Of the four great rural diversions, Hawking, Hunting, Fowling and Fishing, the first will require the greatest share of our attention, as it is now nearly, if not altogether extinct, and was, during the reigns of Elizabeth and James, the most prevalent and fashionable of all amusements.

To the very commencement, indeed, of the seventeenth century, we may point, as to the zenith of its popularity and reputation; for although it had been introduced into this country as early as the middle of the eighth century[255:B], it was, until the commencement of the sixteenth, nearly, if not entirely, confined to the highest rank of society. During the reigns of Elizabeth and James, however, it descended from the nobility to the gentry and wealthy yeomanry, and no man could then have the smallest pretension to the character of a gentleman who kept not a cast of hawks. Of this a ludicrous instance is given us by Ben Jonson, in his Every Man in his Humour:

"Master Stephen. How does my coussin Edward, uncle?

Knowell. O, well cousse, goe in and see: I doubt he be scarce stirring yet.

Steph. Uncle, afore I goe in, can you tell me, an' he have ere a booke of the sciences of hawking, and hunting? I would faine borrow it.

Know. Why, I hope you will not a hawking now, will you?

Steph. No, cousse; but I'll practise against next yere uncle. I have bought me a hawke, and a hood, and bells, and all; I lacke nothing but a booke to keepe it by.

Know. O, most ridiculous.

Steph. Nay, looke you now, you are angrie, uncle: why you know, an' a man have not skill in the hawking, and hunting-languages now-a-days, I'll not give a rush for him. They are more studied than the Greeke, or the Latine. He is for no gallant's company without 'hem.—A fine jest ifaith! Slid a gentleman mun show himselfe like a gentleman!"[256:A]

That the character of Master Stephen is not, in this respect, overcharged, but represents faithfully the fashionable folly of the age, is evident from many contemporary writers, and especially from that sensible old author Richard Brathwait, who, speaking of dogs and hawks, says, "they are to be used only as pleasures and recreations, of which to speake sparingly were much better, than onely to discourse of them, as if our whole reading were in them. Neither doe I speake this without just cause; for I have noted this fault in many of our younger brood of Gentry, who either for want of education in learning, or their owne neglect of learning, have no sooner attained to the strength of making their fist a pearch for a hawke, but by the helpe of some bookes of faulconry, whereby they are instructed in the words of art, they will run division upon discourse of this pleasure: whereas, if at any time they be interrupted by occasion of some other conference, these High-flyers are presently to bee mewed up, for they are taken from their element."[256:B]

Many of the best books on the Art of Falconry were written, indeed, as might be expected, during this universal rage for the amusement, and the hawking coxcombs of the day, adopting their language on all occasions, became necessarily obtrusive and pedantic in a disgusting degree. Of these manuals the most popular were written by George Turberville, Gervase Markham, and Edmund Best.[257:A]

But the most detrimental consequence arising from the universality of this elegant diversion, was the immense expense that attended it, and which frequently involved those who were not opulent in utter ruin: a result not to be wondered at, when we find, that at the commencement of the seventeenth century, a goss-hawk and a tassel-hawk were not to be purchased for less than a hundred marks; and that in the reign of James I., Sir Thomas Monson gave one thousand pounds for a cast of hawks. Brathwait, in his usual strain of propriety, advises those who are not possessed of good estates, to give up all idea of this diversion, and exposes its indiscriminate pursuit in the following pleasant manner:—

"This pleasure," observes he, "as it is a princely delight, so it moveth many to be so dearely enamoured of it, as they will undergoe any charge, rather than forgoe it: which makes mee recall to mind a merry tale which I have read, to this effect. Divers men having entered into discourse, touching the superfluous care (I will not say folly) of such as kept dogs and hawkes for hawking; one Paulus a Florentine stood up and spake: Not without cause (quoth hee) did that foole of Millan laugh at these; and being entreated to tell the tale, hee thus proceeded; upon a time (quoth he) there was a citizen of Millan, a physitian for such as were distracted or lunaticke; who tooke upon him within a certaine time to cure such as were brought unto him. And hee cured them after this sort: Hee had a plat of ground neere his house, and in it a pit of corrupt and stinking water, wherein he bound naked such as were mad to a stake, some of them knee-deepe, others to the groin, and some others deeper according to the degree of their madnesse, where hee so long pined them with water and hunger, till they seemed sound. Now amongst others, there was one brought, whom he had put thigh-deepe in water; who after fifteene dayes began to recover, beseeching the physitian that hee might be taken out of the water. The physitian taking compassion of him, tooke him out, but with this condition, that he should not goe out of the roome. Having obeyed him certaine dayes, he gave him liberty to walke up and downe the house, but not to passe the out-gate; while the rest of his companions, which were many, remaining in the water, diligently observed their physitian's command. Now it chanced, as on a time he stood at the gate, (for out hee durst not goe, for feare he should returne to the pit) he beckoned to a yong gentleman to come unto him, who had a hawke and two spaniels, being moved with the novelty thereof; for to his remembrance before hee fell mad, he had never seene the like. The yong gentleman being come unto him; Sir, (quoth he) I pray you hear mee a word or two, and answer mee at your pleasure: What is this you ride on (quoth he) and how do you imploy him? This is a horse (replied he) and I keepe him for hawking. But what call you that, you carry on your fist, and how do you use it? This is a hawke (said he) and I use to flie with it at pluver and partridge. But what (quoth he) are these which follow you, what doe they, or wherein doe they profit you? These are dogges (said he) and necessary for hawking, to finde and retrieve my game. And what were these birds worth, for which you provide so many things, if you should reckon all you take for a whole yeere? Who answering, hee knew not well, but they were worth a very little, not above sixe crownes. The man replied; what then may be the charge you are at with your horse, dogges and hawke? Some fiftie crowns, said he. Whereat, as one wondering at the folly of the yong gentleman: Away, away Sir, I pray you quickly, and fly hence before our physitian returne home: for if he finde you here, as one that is maddest man alive, he will throw you into his pit, there to be cured with others, that have lost their wits; and more than all others, for he will set you chin-deepe in the water. Inferring hence, that the use or exercise of hawking, is the greatest folly, unlesse sometimes used by such as are of good estate, and for recreation sake.

"Neither is this pleasure or recreation herein taxed, but the excessive and immoderate expence which many are at in maintaining this pleasure. Who as they should be wary in the expence of their coine, so much more circumspect in their expence of time. So as in a word, I could wish yong gentlemen never to bee so taken with this pleasure, as to lay aside the dispatch of more serious occasions, for a flight of feathers in the ayre."[259:A]

The same prudent advice occurs in an author who wrote immediately subsequent to Brathwait, and who, though a lover of the diversion, stigmatises the folly of its general adoption. "As for hawking," says he; "I commend it in some, condemne it in others; in men of qualitie whose estates will well support it, I commend it as a generous and noble qualitie; but in men of meane ranke and religious men[259:B], I condemne it with Blesensis, as an idle and foolish vanitie: for I have ever thought it a kinde of madnesse for such men, to bestow ten pounds in feathers, which at one blast might be blowne away, and to buy a momentary monethly pleasure with the labours and expence of a whole yeare."[260:A]

It is to be regretted, however, that the use of the gun has superseded, among the opulent, the pursuit of this far more elegant and picturesque recreation. As intimately connected, for many centuries, with the romantic manners and costume of our ancient nobility and gentry, it now possesses peculiar charms for the poet and the antiquary, and we look back upon the detail of this pastime, and all its magnificent establishments, with a portion of that interest which time has conferred upon the splendid pageantries of chivalry. Of the estimation in which it was held, and of the pleasure which it produced, in Shakspeare's time, there are not wanting numerous proofs: he has himself frequently alluded to it, and the poets Turberville, Gascoign, and Sydney, have delighted to expatiate on its praises, and to adopt its technical phraseology. But the most interesting eulogia, the most striking pictures of this diversion, appear to us to be derived from a few strokes in Brathwait, Nash, and Massinger; writers who, publishing shortly after Shakspeare's death, and describing the amusement of their youthful days, of course delineate the features as they existed in Shakspeare's age, with as much, if not greater accuracy than the still earlier contemporaries of the bard.

"Hawking," remarks Brathwait, "is a pleasure for high and mounting spirits: such as will not stoope to inferiour lures, having their mindes so farre above, as they scorne to partake with them. It is rare to consider, how a wilde bird should bee so brought to hand, and so well managed as to make us such pleasure in the ayre: but most of all to forgoe her native liberty and feeding, and returne to her former servitude and diet. But in this, as in the rest, we are taught to admire the great goodnesse and bounty of God, who hath not only given us the birds of the aire, with their flesh to feede us, with their voice to cheere us, but with their flight to delight us."[260:B]

"I have in my youthfull dayes," relates Nash, "beene as glad as ever I was to come from Schoole, to see a little martin in the dead time of the yeare, when the winter had put on her whitest coat, and the frosts had sealed up the brookes and rivers, to make her way through the midst of a multitude of fowle-mouth'd ravenous crows and kites, which pursued her with more hydeous cryes and clamours, than did Coll the dog, and Malkin the maide, the Fox in the Apologue.

"When the geese for feare flew over the trees, And out of their hives came the swarme of bees:" Chaucer in his Nunes Priests Tale.

and maugre all their oppositions pulled down her prey, bigger than herselfe, being mounted aloft, steeple-high downe to the ground. And to heare an accipitrary relate againe, how he went forth in a cleere, calme, and sun-shine evening, about an houre before the sunne did usually maske himselfe, unto the river, where finding of a mallard, he whistled off his faulcon, and how shee flew from him as if shee would never have turned head againe, yet presently upon a shoote came in, how then by degrees, by little and little, by flying about and about, she mounted so high, untill shee had lessened herselfe to the view of the beholder, to the shape of a pigeon or partridge, and had made the height of the moone the place of her flight, how presently upon the landing of the fowle, shee came downe like a stone and enewed it, and suddenly got up againe, and suddenly upon a second landing came downe againe, and missing of it, in the downe come recovered it, beyond expectation, to the admiration of the beholder, at a long; and to heare him tell a third time, how he went forth early in a winter's morning, to the woody fields and pastures to fly the cocke, where having by the little white feather in his tayle discovered him in a brake, he cast of a tasel gentle, and how he never ceased in his circular motion, untill he had recovered his place, how suddenly upon the flushing of the cocke he came downe, and missing of it in the downcome, what working there was on both sides, how the cocke mounted, as if he would have pierced the skies; how the hawke flew a contrary way, untill he had made the winde his friend, how then by degrees he got up, yet never offered to come in, untill he had got the advantage of the higher ground, how then he made in, what speed the cocke made to save himselfe, and what hasty pursuit the hawke made, and how after two long miles flight killed it, yet in killing of it killed himselfe. These discourses I love to heare, and can well be content to be an eye-witnesse of the sport, when my occasions will permit."[262:A]

To this lively and minute detail, which brings the scene immediately before our eyes, we must be allowed to add the poetical picture of Massinger, which, as Mr. Gifford has justly observed, "is from the hand of a great master."

————————— "In the afternoon, For we will have variety of delights, We'll to the field again, no game shall rise But we'll be ready for't—— ————————— for the pye or jay, a sparrow hawk Flies from the fist; the crow so near pursued, Shall be compell'd to seek protection under Our horses bellies; a hearn put from her siege, And a pistol shot off in her breech, shall mount So high, that, to your view, she'll seem to soar Above the middle region of the air: A cast of haggard falcons, by me mann'd, Eying the prey at first, appear as if They did turn tail; but with their labouring wings Getting above her, with a thought their pinions Clearing the purer element, make in, And by turns bind with her[262:B]; the frighted fowl, Lying at her defence upon her back, With her dreadful beak, awhile defers her death, But by degrees forced down, we part the fray, And feast upon her.—— ————————— Then, for an evening flight, A tiercel gentle, which I call, my masters, As he were sent a messenger to the moon, In such a place flies, as he seems to say, See me, or see me not! the partridge sprung, He makes his stoop; but wanting breath, is forced To cancelier[263:A]; then, with such speed as if He carried lightning in his wings, he strikes The trembling bird, who even in death appears Proud to be made his quarry."[263:B]

After these praises and general description of hawking, it will be proper to mention the various kinds of hawks used for this diversion, the different modes of exercising it, and a few of the most interesting particulars relative to the training of the birds.

It will be found, on consulting the Treatise on Hawking, by Dame Juliana Barnes, printed by Winkin De Worde in 1496, the Gentleman's Academie, by Markham, 1595, and the Jewel for Gentrie, published in 1614, that during this space of time, the species of hawks employed, and the several ranks of society to which they were appropriated, had scarcely, if at all varied. The following catalogue is, therefore, taken from the ancient Treatyse:

"An eagle, a bawter (a vulture), a melown; these belong unto an Emperor. A Gerfalcon: a Tercell of a Gerfalcon are due to a King. There is a Falcon gentle, and a Tercel gentle; and these be for a Prince. There is a Falcon of the rock; and that is for a Duke. There is a Falcon peregrine; and that is for an earl. Also there is a Bastard; and that hawk is for a baron. There is a Sacre and a Sacret; and these ben for a knight. There is a Lanare and a Lanrell; and these belong to a squire. There is a Merlyon; and that hawk is for a lady. There is an Hoby; and that hawk is for a young man. And these ben hawks of the tour and ben both illuryd to be called and reclaimed. And yet there ben more kinds of hawks. There is a Goshawk; and that hawk is for a yeoman. There is a Tercel; and that is for a poor man. There is a Sparehawk; she is an hawk for a priest. There is a Muskyte; and he is for an holy-water clerk."[264:A]

To this list the Jewel for Gentre adds

A Kesterel, for a knave or servant.

Many of these birds were held in such high estimation by our crowned heads and nobility, that several severe edicts were issued for the preservation of their eggs. These were mitigated in the reign of Elizabeth; but still if any person was convicted of taking or destroying the eggs of the falcon, gos-hawk or laner, he was liable to suffer imprisonment for three months, and was obliged to find security for his good behaviour for seven years, or remain confined until he did.

Hawking was divided into two branches, land and water hawking, and the latter was usually considered as producing the most sport. The diversion of hawking was pursued either on horseback or on foot: on the former in the fields and open country; on the latter, in woods, coverts, and on the banks of rivers. When on foot, the sportsman had the assistance of a stout pole, for the purpose of leaping over ditches, rivulets, &c.; a circumstance which we learn from the chronicle of Hall, where the historian tells us that Henry the Eighth, pursuing his hawk on foot, in attempting to leap over a ditch of muddy water with his pole, it broke, and precipitated the monarch head-foremost into the mud, where, had it not been for the timely assistance of one of his footmen, named John Moody, he would soon have been suffocated; "and so," concludes the venerable chronicler, "God of hys goodnesse preserved him."[264:B]

The game pursued in hawking included a vast variety of birds, many of which, once fashionable articles of the table, have now ceased to be objects of the culinary art. Of those which are now obsolete among epicures may be enumerated, herons, bitterns, swans, cranes, curlews, sheldrakes, cootes, peacocks; of those still in use, teel, mallard, geese, ducks, pheasants, quails, partridges, plovers, doves, turtles, snipes, woodcocks, rooks, larks, starlings, and sparrows.

Hawking, notwithstanding the occasional fatigue and hazard which it produced, was a favourite diversion among the ladies, who in the pursuit of it, according to a writer of the seventeenth century, did not hesitate to assume the male attire and posture. "The [265:A]Bury ladies," observes he, "that used hawking and hunting, were once in a great vaine of wearing breeches."[265:B] The same author has preserved a hawking anecdote of some humour, and which occurred, likewise, at the same place: "Sir Thomas Jermin," he relates, "going out with his servants, and brooke hawkes one evening, at Bury, 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 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."[265:C]

That the training of hawks was a work of labour, difficulty, and skill, and that the person upon whom the task devolved, was highly prized, and supported at a great expense, may be readily imagined. The Falconer was, indeed, an officer of high importance in the household of the opulent, and his whole time was absorbed in the duties of his station. That these were various and incessant may be deduced from the following curious character of a falconer, drawn by a satirist of 1615.[266:A]

"A falkoner is the egge of a tame pullett, hatcht up among hawkes and spaniels. Hee hath in his minority conversed with kestrils and yong hobbies: but growing up he begins to handle the lure, and look a fawlcon in the face. All his learning makes him but a new linguist; for to have studied and practised the termes of Hawke's Dictionary, is enough to excuse his wit, manners, and humanity. He hath too many trades to thrive; and yet if hee had fewer, hee would thrive lesse. Hee need not be envied therefore, for a monopolie, though he be barber-surgeon, physitian, and apothecary, before he commences hawk-leech; for though he exercise all these, and the art of bow-strings together, his patients be compelled to pay him no further, then they be able. Hawkes be his object, that is, his knowledge, admiration, labour, and all; they be indeed his idoll, or mistresse, be they male or female: to them he consecrates his amorous ditties, which be no sooner framed then hallowed; nor should he doubt to overcome the fairest, seeing he reclaimes such haggards, and courts every one with a peculiar dialect. That he is truly affected to his sweetheart in her fether-bed, appeares by the sequele, himselfe being sensible of the same misery, for they be both mewed up together: but he still chuses the worst pennance, by chusing rather an ale-house, or a cellar, for his moulting place than the hawke's mew."[266:B]

The training of Hawks consisted principally in the manning, luring, flying, and hooding them. Of these, the first and second imply a perfect familiarity with the man, and a perfect obedience to his voice and commands, especially that of returning to the fist at the appointed signal.[267:A] The flying includes the appropriation of peculiar hawks to peculiar game; thus the Faulcon gentle, which, according to Gervase Markham, is the principal of hawks, and adapted either for the field or river, will fly at the partridge or the mallard; the Gerfaulcon will fly at the heron; the Saker at the crane or bittern; the Lanner at the partridge, pheasant, or chooffe; the Barbary Faulcon at the partridge only; the Merlin and the Hobby at the lark, or any small bird; the Goshawk or Tercel at the partridge, pheasant, or hare; the Sparrow-hawk at the partridge or blackbird, and the Musket at the bush only.[267:B]

The hooding of hawks, as it embraces many technical terms, which have been adopted by our poets, and among the rest, by Shakspeare, will require a more extended explanation, and this we shall give in the words of Mr. Strutt. "When the hawk," he observes, "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[267:C], 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; 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 hawks 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[268:A]; 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 St. Alban's, 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 [268:B]silver, and charged for accordingly."[268:C]

Thomas Heywood, in his play, entitled A Woman killed with Kindness, and acted before 1604, has a passage on falconry, four lines of which have been quoted by Mr. Strutt, as allusive to the toning of the Milan bells; but as the whole is highly descriptive of the diversion, and is of no great length, we shall venture to transcribe it, with the exception of a few lines, entire:

"Sir Charles. So; well cast off; aloft, aloft; well flown. O, now she takes her at the sowse, and strikes her down To th' earth, like a swift thunder clap.— Now she hath seized the fowl, and 'gins to plume her, Rebeck her not; rather stand still and check her. So: seize her gets, her jesses, and her bells; Away.

Sir Francis. My hawk kill'd too!

Sir Charles. Aye, but 'twas at the querre, Not at the mount, like mine.

Sir Fran. Judgment, my masters.

Cranwell. Your's miss'd her at the ferre.[269:A]

Wendoll. Aye, but our Merlin first had plumed the fowl, And twice renew'd her from the river too; Her bells, Sir Francis, had not both one weight, Nor was one semi-tune above the other: Methinks these Milain bells do sound too full, And spoil the mounting of your hawk.—

Sir Fran. —— Mine likewise seized a fowl Within her talons; and you saw her paws Full of the feathers: both her petty singles, And her long singles griped her more than other; The terrials of her legs were stained with blood: Not of the fowl only, she did discomfit Some of her feathers; but she brake away."[270:A]

To hawking and the language of falconry, Shakspeare, as we have previously observed, has frequently had recourse, and he has selected the terms with his wonted propriety and effect; of this five or six instances will be adequate proof. Othello, in allusion to Desdemona, exclaims:

————— "If I do prove her haggard, Though that jesses were my dear heart-strings, I'd whistle her off, and let her down the wind, To prey at fortune."[270:B]

A haggard is a species of hawk wild and difficult to be reclaimed, and which, if not well trained, flies indiscriminately at every bird; a fault to which Shakspeare again refers in his Twelfth Night, where Viola tells the Clown that

"He must observe their mood on whom he jests— And, like the haggard, check at every feather That comes before his eye."[270:C]

The phrase to whistle off will be best explained by a simile in Burton, which opens his chapter on Air. "As a long-winged hawk when he is first whistled off the fist, mounts aloft, and for his pleasure fetcheth many a circuit in the air, still soaring higher and higher, till he be come to his full pitch, and in the end when the game is sprung, comes down amain, and stoops upon a sudden."[270:D] To let a hawk down the wind, was to dismiss it as worthless.

Petruchio, soliloquising on the means which he had adopted, in order to tame his termagant bride, says emphatically,

"My falcon now is sharp, and passing empty; And, till she stoop, she must not be full-gorged, For then she never looks upon her lure. Another way I have to man my haggard, To make her come, and know her keeper's call, That is,—to watch her, as we watch these kites, That bate, and beat, and will not be obedient."[271:A]

To bate in this passage means to flutter or beat the wings, as striving to fly away, and is metaphorically used in the following address of Juliet to the night:

———————— "Come, civil night,—— Hood my unmann'd blood bating in my cheeks, With thy black mantle."[271:B]

The same tragedy furnishes us with another obligation to falconry, where the love-sick maiden recalls Romeo in these terms:

"Hist! Romeo, hist!——O, for a falconer's voice To lure this tassel-gentle back again."[271:C]

Falstaff's page in the Merry Wives of Windsor is appositely compared to the eyas-musket, an unfledged hawk of the smallest species:

"Mrs. Ford. How now, my eyas-musket? What news with you?"[271:D]

Eyas-musket, remarks Mr. Steevens, is the same as infant Lilliputian, and he subjoins an illustrative passage from Spenser:

———— "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 appointed to announce, by the different intonations of his horn the species of game turned out, so that the company might be prepared for its reception when it broke cover.

The enclosure being guarded by officers or retainers, placed at equal distances, to prevent the multitude prematurely rousing the game, the grand huntsman, as soon as the king, nobility, or gentry had taken their respective stations, sounded three long mootes or blasts with the horn, as a signal for the uncoupling of the hart-hounds, when the game, driven by the manœuvres of the huntsman, passed the lodges where the company were waiting, and were either shot from their bows, or individuals, starting from the groupe, pursued the deer with greyhounds.[275:A]

We find, from the poems of Gascoigne and Turberville, as they appear in their Book of Hunting of 1575, that every accommodation which beautiful scenery and epicurean fare could produce, was thought essential to this branch of the sport. Turberville, describing the scene chosen for the company to take their stations, says—

"The place should first be pight, on pleasant gladsome greene, Yet under shade of stately trees, where little sunne is seene: And neare some fountaine spring, whose chrystall running streames May helpe to coole the parching heate, ycaught by Phœbus beames. The place appoynted thus, it neyther shall be clad With arras nor with tapystry, such paltrie were too bad: Ne yet those hote perfumes, whereof proude courtes do smell, May once presume in such a place, or paradise to dwell. Away with fayned fresh, as broken boughes or leaves, Away, away, with forced flowers, ygathered from their greaves: This place must of itselfe, afforde such sweet delight, And eke such shewe, as better may content the greedie sight; Where sundry sortes of hewes, which growe upon the ground, May seeme, indeede, such tapystry, as we by arte, have found. Where fresh and fragrant flowers, may skorne the courtier's cost, Which daubes himselfe with syvet, muske, and many an ointment lost, Where sweetest singing byrdes, may make such melodye, As Pan, nor yet Apollo's arte, can sounde such harmonye. Where breath of westerne windes, may calmely yeld content, Where casements neede not opened be, where air is never pent. Where shade may serve for shryne, and yet the sunne at hande, Where beautie need not quake for colde, ne yet with sunne be tande. In fine and to conclude, where pleasure dwels at large, Which princes seeke in pallaces, with payne and costly charge. Then such a place once founde, the Butler first appeares,— Then comes the captaine Cooke"—

These gentlemen of the household, it seems, came well provided; the farmer, with wines and ales "in bottles and in barrels," and the latter with colde loynes of veale, colde capon, beefe and goose, pigeon pyes, mutton colde, neates tongs poudred well, gambones of the hogge, saulsages and savery knackes.[276:A]

Of the stag-chace in the open country, and of the ceremonies and costume attending it, at the castellated mansions of the Baron and opulent Squire, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a tolerably accurate idea may be formed from the following statement, drawn up from the ancient writers on the subject, and from the works of the ingenious antiquary Strutt.

The inhabitants of the castle, and the hunters, were usually awakened very early in the morning by the lively sounding of the bugles, after which it was not unusual for two or more minstrels to sing an appropriate roundelay, beneath the windows of the master of the mansion, accompanied by the deep and mellow chorus of the attending rangers and falconers. Shakspeare alludes to a song of this kind in his Romeo and Juliet[276:B], which has been preserved entire by Thomas Ravenscroft[276:C], and commences thus:—

"The hunt is up, the hunt is up, Sing merrily wee, the hunt is up; The birds they sing, The deere they fling; Hey nony nony-no; &c."

The Yeoman Keepers, with their attendants, called Ragged Robins, to the number of ten or twelve, next made their appearance, leading the slow-hounds or brachets, by which the deer were roused. These men were usually dressed in Kendal green, with bugles and short hangers by their sides, and quarter-staffs in their hands, and were followed by the foresters with a number of greyhounds led in leashes for the purpose of plucking down the game.

This assemblage in the Court of the castle was soon augmented by a number of Retainers, or Yeomen who received a small annual pension for attendance on these occasions; they wore a livery, with the cognisance of the house to which they belonged, borne, as a badge of adherence, on their arms, and each man had a buckler on his shoulder, and a burnished broad sword hanging from his belt. Shortly afterwards appeared the pages and squires in hunting garbs on horse-back and on foot, and armed with spears and long and cross bows; and lastly the Baron, his friends, and the ladies.

The company thus completed, were conducted by the huntsmen to a thicket, in which, they knew, by previous observation, that a stag had been harboured all night. Into this cover the keeper entered, leading his ban-dog (a blood-hound tied in a leam or band), and as soon as the stag abandoned it, the greyhounds were slipped upon him; these, however, after running two or three miles, he usually threw out, by again entering cover, when the slow-hounds and prickers were sent in, to drive him from his strength. The poor animal now traverses the country for several miles, and after using every effort and manœuvre in vain, exhausted and breathless, his mouth embossed with foam, and the tears dropping from his eyes, he turns in despair upon his pursuers, and in this situation the boldest hunter of the train generally rides in, and, at some risque, dispatches him with a short hunting-sword. The treble-mort is then sounded, accompanied by the shouts of the men and the yelping of the dogs, and the huntsman ceremoniously presents his knife to the master of the chase, in order that he may take, as it is termed, the say of the deer.[278:A]

The danger which the ancient hunter incurred, on dealing the death stroke to the stag when he turned to bay, is strikingly exemplified by an incident in the life of Wilson the historian, during the time he formed a part of the household of the Earl of Essex, in the reign of Elizabeth.

"Sir Peter Lee, of Lime, in Cheshire, invited my lord one summer, to hunt the stagg. And having a great stagg in chace, and many gentlemen in the pursuit, the stagg took soyle. And divers, whereof I was one, alighted, and stood with swords drawne, to have a cut at him, at his coming out of the water. The staggs there, being wonderfully fierce and dangerous, made us youths more eager to be at him. But he escaped us all. And it was my misfortune to be hindered of my coming nere him, the way being sliperie, by a fall; which gave occasion to some, who did not know mee, to speak as if I had falne for feare. Which being told me, I left the stagg, and followed the gentleman who first spake it. But I found him of that cold temper, that it seems his words made an escape from him; as by his denial and repentance it appeared. But this made mee more violent in pursuit of the stagg, to recover my reputation. And I happened to be the only horseman in, when the dogs sett him up at bay; and approaching nere him on horsebacke, hee broke through the dogs, and run at mee, and tore my horse's side with his hornes, close by my thigh. Then I quitted my horse, and grew more cunning (for the dogs had sette him up againe), stealing behind him with my sword, and cut his hamstrings; and then got upon his back, and cut his throate."[280:A]

A still more difficult and gallant feat, however, of this kind, was performed by John Selwyn, the under-keeper of Queen Elizabeth, who, one day, animated by the presence of his royal mistress, at a chase, in her park of Oatlands, pursued the stag with such activity, that, overtaking it, he sprung from his horse on the animal; when, after most skilfully maintaining his seat for some time, he drew his hunting-sword, and, just as he reached the green, plunged it in the throat of the stag, which immediately dropped down dead at the feet of Elizabeth; an achievement which is sculptured on his monument in Walton church, Surrey, where he is represented in the very act of killing the infuriated beast.[280:B]

The taking the say of, and the breaking up, the deer, were formerly attended with many ceremonies and superstitions.[280:C] "Touching the death of a deare, or other wylde beast," says a writer of the sixteenth century, "yee knowe your selves what ceremonies they use about the same. Every poore man may cut out an oxe, or a sheepe, whereas such venison may not be dismembered but of a gentylman; who bareheadded, and set on knees, with a knife prepared properly to that use, (for every kynde of knife is not allowable) also with certain jestures, cuttes a sunder certaine partes of the wild beast, in a certain order very circumstantly. Which holy misterie, having seen the lyke yet more than a hundred tymes before. Then (sir) whose happe it bee to eate parte of the fleshe, marye hee thinkes verily to bee made thereby halfe a gentilman."[281:A]

After the process of dismemberment, and the selection of choice pieces, the forester, the keeper, and the hounds had their allotted share, and superstition granted even a portion to the ominous raven. "There is a little gristle," relates Turberville, "which is upon the spoone of the brisket, which we call the raven's bone; and I have seen in some places a raven so wont and accustomed to it, that she would never fail to croak and cry for it all the time you were in breaking up of the deer, and would not depart till she had it."

Of this superstitious observance Jonson has given us a pleasing sketch, in the most poetical of his works, the Sad Shepherd:—

"Marian. —————— He that undoes him, Doth cleave the brisket bone upon the spoon, Of which a little gristle grows——you call it—

Robin Hood. The raven's bone.

Marian. —————— Now o'er head sat a raven On a sere bough, a grown, great bird and hoarse, Who, all the time the deer was breaking up, So croaked and cried for it, as all the huntsmen, Especially old Scathlocke, thought it ominous!"[281:B]

In an age, when to hawke and to hunt formed the Gentleman's Academy[281:C], the Falconer and the Huntsman were most important characters; of the former we have already given an outline from contemporary authority, and of the latter the following extract delineates a very curious picture, in which the manners, the dress, and the accoutrements are marked with singular strength and raciness of touch.

"A huntsman is the lieutenant of dogs, and foe to harvest: he is frolick in a faire morning fit for his pleasure; and alike rejoyceth with the Virginians, to see the rising sun: he doth worship it as they, but worships his game more than they; and is in some things almost as barbarous. A sluggard he contemnes, and thinks the resting time might be shortened; which makes him rise with day, observe the same pace, and prove full as happy, if the day be happy. The names of foxe, hare, and bucke, be all attracting sillables; sufficient to furnish fifteene meales with long discourse in the adventures of each. Foxe, drawes in his exploits done against cubbes, bitch-foxes, otters and badgers: hare, brings out his encounters, platformes, engines, fortifications, and night worke done against leveret, cony, wilde-cat, rabbet, weasell, and pole-cat: then bucke, the captaine of all, provokes him (not without strong passion) to remember hart, hind, stagge, doe, pricket, fawne, and fallow deere. He uses a dogged forme of governement, which might bee (without shame) kept in humanity; and yet he is unwilling to be governed with the same reason: either by being satisfied with pleasure, or content with ill fortune. Hee hath the discipline to marshall dogs, and sutably; when a wise herald would rather mervaile, how he could distinguish their coates, birth, and gentry. Hee carries about him in his mouth the very soule of Ovid's bodies, metamorphosed into trees, rockes and waters; for, when he pleases, they shall eccho and distinctly answere; and when he pleases, be extremely silent. There is little danger in him towards the common wealth; for his worst intelligence comes from shepherds or woodmen; and that onely threatens the destruction of hares; a well knowne dry meate. The spring and he are still at variance; in mockage therefore, and revenge together of that season, he weares her livery in winter. Little consultations please him best; but the best directions he doth love and follow, they are his dogs. If hee cannot prevaile therefore, his lucke must be blamed, for he takes a speedy course. He cannot be less than a conquerour from the beginning, though he wants the booty; for he pursues the flight. His manhood is a crooked sword with a sawbacke; but the badge of his generous valour is a home to give notice. Battery and blowing up, he loves not; to undermine is his stratageme. His physick teaches him not to drinke sweating; in amends whereof, he liquors himselfe to a heate, upon coole bloud, if he delights (at least) to emulate his dog in a hot nose. If a kennel of hounds passant take away his attention and company from church; do not blame his devotion; for in them consists the nature of it, and his knowledge. His frailties are, that he is apt to mistake any dog worth the stealing, and never take notice of the collar. He dreames of a hare sitting, a foxe earthed, or the bucke couchant: and if his fancy would be moderate, his actions might be full of pleasure."[283:A]

Making a natural transition from the huntsman to his hounds, we have to remark, that one great object, at this period, in the construction of the kennel, was the modulation and harmony of the vocal powers of the dog. This was carried to a nicety and perfection little practised in the present day. Gervase Markham seems to write con amore on this subject, and has penned directions which partake both of the picturesque, and of the melody on which he is descanting: thus, speaking of the production of loudness of cry, he says, "if you would have your kennel for loudness of mouth, you shall not then choose the hollow deep mouth, but the loud clanging mouth, which spendeth freely and sharply, and as it were redoubleth in utterance: and if you mix with them the mouth that roreth, and the mouth that whineth, the cry will be both the louder and the smarter;—and the more equally you compound these mouths, haveing as many rorers as spenders, and as many whiners, as of either of the other, the louder and pleasanter your cry will be, especially, if it be in sounding tall woods, or under the echo of rocks;" and treating of the composition of notes in the kennel, he adds, "you shall as nigh as you can, sort their mouths into three equal parts of musick, that is to say base, counter-tenor and mean; the base are those mouths which are most deep and solemn, and are spent out plain and freely, without redoubling: the counter-tenor are those which are most loud and ringing, whose sharp sounds pass so swift, that they seem to dole and make division; and the mean are those which are soft sweet mouths, that though plain, and a little hollow, yet are spent smooth and freely; yet so distinctly, that a man may count the notes as they open. Of these three sorts of mouths, if your kennel be (as near as you can) equally compounded, you shall find it most perfect and delectable: for though they have not the thunder and loudness of the great dogs, which may be compared to the high wind-instruments, yet they will have the tunable sweetness of the best compounded consorts; and sure a man may find as much art and delight in a lute as in an organ."[284:A]

Shakspeare, who frequently avails himself of the language, imagery, and circumstances attendant on this diversion, has particularly noticed, in a passage of much animation and beauty, the care taken to arrange the notes of the kennel, and the pleasure derivable from the varied intonations of the hounds. Theseus addressing Hippolyta, exclaims—

"My love shall hear the musick of my hounds.— Uncouple in the western valley; go:— Despatch, I say, and find the forester.— We will, fair queen, up to the mountain's top, And mark the musical confusion Of hounds and echo in conjunction.

Hip. —————— Never did I hear Such gallant chiding; for, besides the groves, The skies, the fountains, every region near Seem'd all one mutual cry: I never heard So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.

The. My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind, So flew'd[284:B], so sanded[284:C]; and their heads are hung With ears that sweep away the morning dew; Crook-knee'd, and dew-lap'd like Thessalian bulls; Slow in pursuit, but _match'd in mouth like bells, Each under each_. A cry more tuneable Was never holla'd to, nor cheer'd with horn."[284:D]

It appears from a scene in Timon of Athens, and from a passage in Laneham's Account of the Queen's Entertainment at Killingworth Castle, 1575, that it was a common thing, at this period, to hunt after dinner, or in the evening. Timon, having been employed, during the morning, in hunting, says to Alcibiades—

"So soon as dinner's done, we'll forth again;"[285:A]

and Elizabeth, twice, during her residence with the Earl of Leicester, is described as pursuing this exercise in the cool of the evening. Honest Laneham's narrative of one of these royal chases will amuse the reader.

"Munday waz hot, and thearfore her Highness kept in till a five a clok in the eevening: what time it pleazz'd her to ride foorth into the chace too hunt the Hart of fors; which foound anon, and after sore chased, and chafed by the hot pursuit of the hooundes, waz fain of fine fors at last to take soil. Thear to beholl'd the swift fleeting of the deer afore, with the stately cariage of hiz head in his swimmyng, spred (for the quantitee) lyke the sail of a ship; the hoounds harroing after, az had they bin a number of skiphs too the spoyle of a karvell; the ton no lesse eager in purchaz of his pray, than waz the other earnest in savegard of hiz life; so az the earning of the hoounds in continuauns of their crie, the swiftness of the deer, the running of footmen, the galloping of horsez, the blasting of hornz, the halloing and hewing of the huntsmen, with the excellent echoz between whilez from the woods and waters in valliez resounding; moved pastime delectabl in so hy a degree, az, for ony parson to take pleazure by moost sensez at onez, in mine opinion, thear can be none ony wey comparable to this; and special in this place, that of nature iz foormed so feet for the purpoze; in feith, Master Martin, if ye coold with a wish, I woold ye had bin at it: Wel, the hart waz kild, a goodly deer."[285:B]

So partial was Her Majesty to this diversion that even in her seventy-seventh year she still pursued it with avidity; for Rowland Whyte, one of her courtiers, writing to Sir Robert Sidney on September 12th, 1600, says, "Her majesty is well and excellently disposed to hunting, for every second day she is on horseback, and continues the sport long;" and when not disposed to incur the fatigue of joining in the chase, she was recreated with a sight of the pastime; thus at the seat of Lord Montecute, in 1591, she saw, after dinner, from a turret, "sixteen bucks all having fayre lawe, pulled downe with greyhounds in a laund or lawn."[286:A]

Nor was James the First less passionately addicted to the sport; his journey from Scotland to England, on his accession to the throne of the latter kingdom, was frequently protracted by his inability to resist the temptation of joining in the chase; on his road to Withrington, the seat of Sir Robert Cary, after a hard ride of thirty-seven miles in less than four hours, "and by the way for a note," says a contemporary writer, "the miles according to the northern phrase, are a wey bit longer, then they be here in the south,—His Majesty having a little while reposed himselfe after his great journey, found new occasion to travell further: for, as he was delighting himselfe with the pleasure of the parke, hee suddenly beheld a number of deere neare the place: the game being so faire before him hee could not forbeare, but according to his wonted manner, forth he went and slew two of them;" again, "After his Majesties short repast to Werslop his Majestie rides forward, but by the way in the parke he was somewhat stayed; for there appeared a number of huntes-men all in greene; the chiefe of which with a woodman's speech did welcome him, offering his Majestie to shew him some game, which he gladly condiscended to see; and with a traine set he hunted a good space, very much delighted."[286:B] This diversion from his direct route is repeatedly noticed by the same author, and proves the strong attachment of the monarch to this amusement, which he preferred to either hawking or shooting; he divided his time, says Wellwood, "betwixt his standish, his bottle, and his hunting; the last had his fair weather, the two former his dull and cloudy[287:A];" an assertion which with regard to hunting is corroborated by Wilson, who, recording his visit to his native dominions in 1617, informs us, that on his return he exhibited the same keen relish for the sport which he had shown in 1603: "The King, in his return from Scotland," he remarks, "made his Progress through the hunting-countries, (his hounds and hunters meeting him,) Sherwood-Forest, Need-wood, and all the parks and forests in his way, were ransacked for his recreation; and every night begat a new day of delight."[287:B] In short, James was so engrossed by his passion for hunting, that he neglected the most important business to indulge it; and even affected the garb of a hunter when he ought to have been in that of a king. Osborne calls him a Sylvan Prince, and adds, "I shall leave him dressed to posterity in the colours I saw him in the next Progress after his Inauguration, which was as green as the grass he trod on, with a feather in his cap, and a horn instead of a sword by his side."[287:C]

To these brief notices of hawking and hunting, it may be necessary to add a very few remarks on the kindred amusements of fowling and fishing, as far as they deviate, either in manner or estimation, from the practice or opinions of the present day. In the pursuit of fowling, indeed, there is little or no discrepancy between the two periods, if we make an exception for two instances; and these now obsolete modes of exercising the art, were termed horse-stalking and bird-batting. The former consisted originally of a horse trained for the purpose, and so mantled over with trappings as to hide the fowler completely from the game; a contrivance much improved upon for facility of usage by substituting a stuffed canvas figure, painted to resemble a horse grazing; this was so light that the sportsman might move it easily with one hand, and behind it he could securely take his aim; to this curious species of deception Shakspeare alludes in As You Like It, where the Duke, speaking of Touchstone, says, "He uses his folly like a stalking-horse, and under the presentation of that, he shoots his wit[288:A];" and again, in Much Ado about Nothing, Claudio exclaims, "Stalk on, stalk on; the fowl sits."[288:B] It appears from Drayton, that the fowler shot from underneath his horse, where he was concealed by the mantle-cloth depending to the ground: thus in the Polyolbion.

"One underneath his horse to get a shoot doth stalk;"[288:C]

and in the Muses' Elysium—

"Then underneath my horse, I stalk my game to strike."[288:D]

Sometimes, instead of a stuffed canvas figure, the form of a horse painted on a cloth was carried before the sportsman: "Methinks," says a writer of this period quoted by Mr. Reed, "I behold the cunning fowler, such as I have knowne in the fenne countries and els-where, that doe shoot at woodcockes, snipes, and wilde fowle, by sneaking behind a painted cloth which they carry before them, having pictured in it the shape of a horse; which while the silly fowle gazeth on, it is knockt down with hale shot, and so put in the fowler's budget."[288:E]

We have reason to suppose that Henry the Eighth often amused himself in this manner; for in the inventories of his wardrobes, preserved in the Harleian MS., are to be found frequent allowances of materials for making "stalking coats, and stalking hose for the use of his majesty."[289:A]

Of the peculiar mode of netting called bird-batting, the following account has been given by a once popular authority on these subjects:—"This sport we call in England most commonly bird-batting, and some call it low-belling; and the use of it is to go with a great light of cressets, or rags of linen dipped in tallow, which will make a good light; and you must have a pan or plate made like a lanthorn, to carry your light in, which must have a great socket to hold the light, and carry it before you, on your breast, with a bell in your other hand, and of a great bigness, made in the manner of a cow-bell, but still larger; and you must ring it always after one order. If you carry the bell, you must have two companions with nets, one on each side of you; and what with the bell, and what with the light, the birds will be so amazed, that when you come near them, they will turn up their white bellies: your companions shall then lay their nets quietly upon them, and take them. But you must continue to ring the bell; for, if the sound shall cease, the other birds, if there be any more near at hand, will rise up and fly away."[289:B] This method was used to ensnare wood-cocks, partridges, larks, &c. and it is probable that to a stratagem of this kind Shakspeare may allude, when he paints Buckingham exclaiming—

"The net has fall'n upon me; I shall perish Under device and practice."[289:C]

FISHING, as an art, has deviated little, in this country, from the state to which it had attained three centuries ago; but it is a subject of interest and amusement, to mark the enthusiasm with which, during the period that we are considering, and anteriorly, this delightful recreation has been discussed, and the minutiæ to which its literary patrons have descended.

Of books written on the Art of Angling previous to, and during the age of Shakspeare, five, independent of subsequent editions, may be enumerated; and from three of these, the most curious of their kind, we shall quote a few passages indicative of the warm attachment alluded to in the preceding paragraph. The earliest printed production on this subject is The Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle, included, for the first time, in, what may be termed, the second edition of the Book of St. Albans, namely, The Treatyses perteynynge to Hawkynge, Huntynge and Fisshynge with an angle, printed at Westminster, by Wynkyn De Worde, 1496. This little tract, which has been attributed, though perhaps not[290:A] correctly, to Dame Juliana Berners, commences with giving a decided preference to fishing when compared with hunting, hawking, and fowling, in the course of which the author observes, that the Angler, if his sport should fail him, "atte the leest, hath his holsom walke, and mery at his ease, a swete ayre of the swete savoure of the meede floures, that makyth him hungry; he hereth the melodyous armony of fowles; he seeth the yonge swannes, heerons, duckes, cotes, and many other fowles, wyth theyr brodes; wyche me semyth better than alle the noyse of houndys, the blastes of hornys, and the scrye of fowlis, that hunters, fawkeners, and foulers can make. And if the Angler take fysshe; surely, thenne, is there noo man merier than he is in his spryte[290:B];" and the book concludes in a singularly pleasing strain of piety and simplicity. "Ye shall not use this forsayd crafty dysporte," says this lover of fishing, "for no covetysenes, to the encreasynge and sparynge of your money oonly; but pryncypally for your solace, and to cause the helthe of your body, and specyally of your soule: for whanne ye purpoos to goo on your dysportes in fysshynge, ye woll not desyre gretly many persons wyth you, whyche myghte lette you of your game. And thenne ye may serve God, devoutly, in sayenge affectuously youre custumable prayer; and, thus doynge, ye shall eschewe and voyde many vices."

Of this impression of the Book of St. Albans by De Worde, numerous editions were published during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and frequently with new titles, as the "Gentleman's Academie" 1595; the "Jewell for Gentrie" 1614, and the "Gentleman's Recreation" 1674. Two small tracts, however, on angling, possessing some originality, were published by Leonard Mascall, and John Taverner, the former in 1590, and the latter in[291:A]1600; but the most important work on the subject, after the Treatyse on Fysshynge, is a poem written by one John Dennys, or Davors, with the following title: The Secrets of Angling; teaching the choicest Tooles, Baytes, and Seasons for the taking of any Fish, in Pond or River: practised and familiarly opened in three Bookes. By J. D. Esquire. 8vo. Lond. 1613. This is a production of considerable poetic merit, as will be evident from the author's eulogium on his art: after reprobating the pastimes of gaming, wantonness, and drinking, he exclaims—

"O let me rather on the pleasant brinke Of Tyne and Trent possesse some dwelling place, Where I may see my quill and corke downe sinke With eager bite of Barbell, Bleike, or Dace: And on the world and his Creatour thinke, While they proud Thais painted sheet embrace, And with the fume of strong tobacco's smoke, All quaffing round are ready for to choke.

Let them that list these pastimes then pursue, And on their pleasing fancies feed their fill; So I the fields and meadows green may view, And by the rivers fresh may walke at will, Among the dazies and the violets blew: Red hyacinth, and yellow daffodill, Purple narcissus like the morning rayes, Pale ganderglas, and azor culverkayes.

I count it better pleasure to behold The goodly compasse of the lofty skie, And in the midst thereof like burning gold, The flaming chariot of the world's great eye; The watry clouds that in the ayre uprold, With sundry kinds of painted colours flie; And faire Aurora lifting up her head, All blushing rise from old Tithonus bed.

The hils and mountains raised from the plains, The plains extended levell with the ground, The ground divided into sundry vains, The vains enclos'd with running rivers round, The rivers making way through nature's chains, With headlong course into the sea profound: The surging sea beneath the vallies low, The vallies sweet, and lakes that lovely flow.

The lofty woods, the forests wide and long Adorn'd with leaves and branches fresh and green, In whose cool brows the birds with chanting song Do welcome with their quire the Summer's Queen, The meadows fair where Flora's guifts among, Are intermixt the verdant grasse between, The silver skaled fish that softly swim Within the brooks and crystall watry brim.

All these and many more of his creation, That made the heavens, the Angler oft doth see, And takes therein no little delectation To thinke how strange and wonderfull they bee, Framing thereof an inward contemplation, To set his thoughts on other fancies free: And whiles he looks on these with joyfull eye, His minde is wrapt above the starry skie."[293:A]

The poet has entered so minutely into his task, as to give directions for the colour of the angler's cloaths, which he wishes should be russet or gray[293:B]; and he opens his third book with a descriptive catalogue of the moral virtues and qualities of mind necessary to a lover of the pastime; these, he informs us, are twelve, namely, faith, hope, charity, patience, humility, courage, liberality, knowledge, placability, piety, temperance, and memory; an enumeration sufficiently extensive, it might be supposed, to damp the enthusiasm of the most eager disciple; yet has Gervase Markham, notwithstanding, wonderfully augmented the list. This indefatigable author, in an early edition of his Countrey Contentments[293:C], converted the poetry of Davors into prose, with the following title: "The whole Art of Angling; as it was written in a small Treatise in Rime, and now for the better understanding of the Reader put into prose, and adorned and inlarged." The additions are numerous and entertaining, a specimen of which, under the marginal notation of Angler's vertues, will convey a distinct and curious idea of the estimation in which this art was held in the reign of James the First, and of the moral and mental qualifications deemed essential, at this period, towards its successful attainment.

"Now for the inward qualities of mind, albeit some writers reduce them to twelve heads, which, indeed, whosoever enjoyeth, cannot chuse but be very compleat in much perfection, yet I must draw them into many other branches. The first and most especial whereof is, that a skilful Angler ought to be a general scholler, and seen in all the liberal sciences, as a grammarian, to know how either to write or discourse of his art in true and fitting terms, either without affectation or rudeness. He should have sweetness of speech, to persuade and intice others to delight in an exercise so much laudable. He should have strength of arguments to defend and maintain his profession, against envy or slander. He should have knowledge in the sun, moon, and stars, that by their aspects he may guess the seasonableness or unseasonableness of the weather, the breeding of storms, and from what coasts the winds are ever delivered. He should be a good knower of countries, and well used to highwayes, that by taking the readiest paths to every lake, brook, or river, his journies may be more certain, and less wearisome. He should have knowledge in proportions of all sorts, whether circular, square, or diametrical, that when he shall be questioned of his diurnal progresses, he may give a geographical description of the angles and channels of rivers, how they fall from their heads, and what compasses they fetch in their several windings. He must also have the perfect art of numbring, that in the sounding of lakes or rivers, he may know how many foot or inches each severally containeth; and by adding, substracting, or multiplying the same, he may yield the reason of every river's swift or slow current. He should not be unskilful in musick, that whensoever either melancholy, heaviness of his thoughts, or the perturbations of his own fancies, stirreth up sadness in him, he may remove the same with some godly hymn or anthem, of which David gives him ample examples.

"He must be of a well settled and constant belief, to enjoy the benefit of his expectation; for then to despair, it were better never to be put in practice: and he must ever think where the waters are pleasant, and any thing likely, that there the Creator of all good things hath stored up much of plenty, and though your satisfaction be not as ready as your wishes, yet you must hope still, that with perseverance you shall reap the fulness of your harvest with contentment: Then he must be full of love both to his pleasure and to his neighbour: to his pleasure, which otherwise will be irksome and tedious, and to his neighbour, that he neither give offence in any particular, nor be guilty of any general destruction: then he must be exceeding patient, and neither vex nor excruciate himself with losses or mischances, as in losing the prey when it is almost in the hand, or by breaking his tools by ignorance or negligence, but with pleased sufferance amend errors, and think mischances instructions to better carefulness.

"He must then be full of humble thoughts, not disdaining when occasion commands to kneel, lye down, or wet his feet or fingers, as oft as there is any advantage given thereby, unto the gaining the end of his labour. Then must he be strong and valiant, neither to be amazed with storms, nor affrighted with thunder, but hold them according to their natural causes, and the pleasure of the highest: neither must he, like the fox which preyeth upon lambs, employ all his labour against the smaller frey; but like the lyon that seizeth elephants, think the greatest fish which swimmeth, a reward little enough for the pains which he endureth. Then must he be liberal, and not working only for his own belly, as if it could never be satisfied; but he must with much cheerfulness bestow the fruits of his skill amongst his honest neighbours, who being partners of his gain, will doubly renown his triumph, and that is ever a pleasing reward to vertue.

"Then must he be prudent, that apprehending the reasons why the fish will not bite, and all other casual impediments which hinder his sport, and knowing the remedies for the same, he may direct his labours to be without troublesomeness.

"Then he must have a moderate contention of the mind to be satisfied with indifferent things, and not out of any avaritious greediness think every thing too little, be it never so abundant.

"Then must he be of a thankful nature, praising the author of all goodness, and shewing a large gratefulness for the least satisfaction.

"Then must he be of a perfect memory, quick and prompt to call into his mind all the needfull things which are any way in this exercise to be imployed, lest by omission or by forgetfulness of any, he frustrate his hopes, and make his labour effectless. Lastly, he must be of a strong constitution of body, able to endure much fasting, and not of a gnawing stomach, observing hours, in which if it be unsatisfied, it troubleth both the mind and body, and loseth that delight which maketh the pastime only pleasing."[296:A]

It is impossible to read this elaborate catalogue of qualifications without a smile; for who would suppose that grammar, rhetoric and logic, astronomy, geography, arithmetic and music, were necessary to form an angler: yet we must allow, indeed, even in the present times, that hope, patience, and contentment are still articles of indispensable use to him who would catch fish; for though, as Shakspeare justly observes,

"The pleasant'st angling is to see the fish Cut with her golden oars the silver stream, And greedily devour the treacherous bait,"[296:B]

yet are we so frequently disappointed of this latter spectacle, that the art may be truly considered as a school for the temper, and as meriting the rational encomium of Sir Henry Wotton, a dear lover of the angle in the days of Shakspeare, and who has declared that, after tedious study, angling was "a rest to his mind, a cheerer of his spirits, a diverter of sadness[297:A], a calmer of unquiet thoughts, a moderator of passions, a procurer of contentedness;" and "that it begat habits of peace and patience in those that professed and practised it." "Indeed, my friend," adds the amiable Walton, "you will find angling to be like the virtue of humility; which has a calmness of spirit, and a world of other blessings, attending upon it."[297:B]

A rural diversion of a kind very opposite to that of angling, namely, HORSE-RACING, may be considered, during the reigns of Elizabeth and James, if we compare it with the state to which the rage for gambling has since carried it, as still in its infancy. It was classed, indeed, with hawking and hunting, as a liberal pastime, and almost generally pursued for the mere purposes of exercise or pleasure; hence the moral satirists of the age, the Puritans of the sixteenth century, have recommended it as a substitute for cards and dice. That it was, however, even at this period, occasionally practised in the spirit of the modern turf, will be evident from the authority of Shakspeare, who says,

——————— "I have heard of riding wagers, Where horses have been nimbler than the sands That run i'the clock's behalf;"[297:C]

and Burton, who wrote at the close of the Shakspearean era, mentions the ruinous consequences of this innovation: "Horse-races," he observes, "are desports of great men, and good in themselves, though many gentlemen by such means gallop quite out of their fortunes."[298:A]

To encourage, however, a spirit of emulation, prizes were established for the swiftest horses, and these were usually either silver bells or silver cups; from the prevalence of the former, the common term for horse-races in the time of James I. was bell-courses, an amusement which became very frequent in the reign of this prince, and, though the value of the prize did not amount to more than eight or ten pounds, and the riders were for the most part the owners of the horses, attracted a numerous concourse of spectators.

The estimation in which the breed of race-horses was held, even in the age of Elizabeth, may be drawn from a passage in one of the satires of Bishop Hall, first published in 1597:—

————————— "Dost thou prize Thy brute beasts worth by their dam's qualities? Say'st thou this colt shall prove a swift pac'd steed, Onely because a Jennet did him breed? Or say'st thou this same horse shall win the prize, Because his dam was swiftest Trunchifice Or Runceval his syre; himself a galloway? While like a tireling jade, he lags half way."[298:B]

While on this subject, we may remark, that the Art of Riding was, during the era we are contemplating, carried to a state of great perfection;

"To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus, And witch the world with noble horsemanship,"[298:C]

was the pursuit of every eager and aspiring spirit, and various treatises were written to facilitate the attainment of an accomplishment at once so useful and so fashionable. Among these, the pieces of Gervase Markham may be deemed the best; indeed, his earliest work on the subject, which is dated 1593, claims to be the first ever written in this country on the art of training Running-horses[299:A]; and is supposed also to be the first production of Markham: it went through many impressions under various titles, and from one of these termed Cavelarice, printed in 1607, I shall select a minutely curious picture of the "horseman's apparel."

"First, when you begin to learne to ride, you must come to the stable, in such decent and fit apparel, as is meet for such an exercise, that is to say, a hat which must sit close and firme upon your heade, with an indifferent narrow verge or brim, so that in the saults or bounds of the horse, it may neither through widenesse or unweldinesse fall from your head, nor with the bredth of the brim fall into your eies, and impeach your sight, both which are verie grosse errors: About your neck you shall weare a falling band, and no ruffe, whose depth or thicknesse, may, either with the winde, or motions of your horse, ruffell about your face; or, according to the fashion of the Spaniards, daunce hobby-horse-like about your shoulders, which though in them is taken for a grace, yet in true judgment it is found an errour. Your doublet shal be made close and hansome to your bodie, large wasted, so that you may ever be sure to ride with your points trussed (for to ride otherwise is most vilde) and in all parts so easye, that it may not take from you the use of anie part of your bodie. About your waste you must have ever your girdle and thereon a smal dagger or punniard, which must be so fast in the sheath that no motion of the horse may cast it forth, and yet so readie, that upon any occasion you may draw it. Your hose would be large, rounde, and full, so that they may fill your saddle, which should it otherwise be emptie and your bodie looke like a small substance in a great compasse, it were wondrous uncomely. Your bootes must be cleane, blacke, long, and close to your legge, comming almost up to your middle thigh, so that they may lie as a defence betwixt your knee and the tree of your saddle. Your boote-hose must come some two inches higher then your bootes, being hansomely tied up with pointes. Your spurres must be strong and flat inward, bending with a compasse under your ancle: the neck of your spurre must be long and straight, and rowels thereof longe and sharp, the prickes thereof not standing thicke together, nor being above five in number. Upon your handes you must weare a hansome paire of gloves, and in your right hande you must have a long rodde finely rush-growne, so that the small ende thereof be hardly so great as a round packe-threed, insomuch that when you move or shake it, the noyse thereof may be lowde and sharpe."[300:A]

Having thus noticed the great rural diversions of this period, as far as they deviate from modern practice, the remainder of the chapter will be occupied by such minor amusements of the country as may now justly be considered obsolete; for it must be recollected, that to enumerate only what is peculiar to the era under consideration, forms the object of our research. It should, likewise, here be added, that those amusements which are equally common to both country and town, will find their place under the latter head, such as cards, dice, the practice of archery, baiting, &c. &c.

Among the amusements generally prevalent in the country, Burton has included the Quintaine. This was originally a mere martial sport; and, as Vegetius informs us, familiar to the Romans, from an individual of which nation, named Quintus, it is supposed to have derived its etymology. During the early feudal ages of modern Europe it continued to support its military character, was practised by the higher orders of society, and preceded, and probably gave origin to, tilting, justs, and tournaments. These, however, as more elegant and splendid in their costume, gradually superseded it during the prevalence of chivalry; it then became an exercise for the middle ranks, for burgesses and citizens, and at length towards the close of the sixteenth century, degenerated into a mere rustic sport.

It would appear, from comparing Stowe with Shakspeare, that about the year 1600, the Quintain was made use of under two forms; the most simple consisting of a post fixed perpendicularly in the ground, on the top of which was a cross-bar turning upon a pivot or spindle, with a broad board nailed at one end and a bag of sand suspended at the other; at the board they ran on horseback with spears or staves, and "hee," says Stowe, "that hit not the broad end of the quinten was of all men laughed to scorne; and hee that hit it full, if he rid not the faster, had a sound blow in his necke with a bagge full of sand hanged on the other end."[301:A] A more costly and elaborate machine, resembling the human form, is alluded to by Shakspeare in As You Like It, where Orlando says,

——————— "My better parts Are all thrown down; and _that which here stands up, Is but a quintain_, a mere lifeless block."[301:B]

In Italy, Germany, and Flanders, a quintain, carved in wood in imitation of the human form, was, during the sixteenth century, in common use.[301:C] The figure very generally represented a Saracen, armed with a shield in one hand, and a sword in the other, and, being placed on a pivot, the skill of those who attacked it, depended on shivering the lance to pieces between the eyes of the figure; for if the weapon deviated to the right or left, and especially if it struck the shield, the quintain turned round with such velocity as to give the horseman a violent blow on the back with his sword, a circumstance which covered the performer with ridicule, and excited the mirth of the spectators. That such a machine, termed the shield quintain, was used in Ireland during the reign of Richard the Second, we have the authority of Froissart; it is therefore highly probable, that this species of the diversion was as common in England, and still lingered here in the reign of Elizabeth; and that to a quintain of this kind, representing an armed man, and erected for the purpose of a military exercise, Shakspeare alludes in the passage just quoted.

It must, however, be allowed, that at the commencement of the seventeenth century, and for several years anterior, the quintain had almost universally become the plaything of the peasantry, and was seldom met with but at rural weddings, wakes, or fairs; or under any other form than that which Stowe has described. No greater proof of this can be given than the fact, that when Elizabeth was entertained at Kenelworth Castle, in 1575, with an exact representation of a Country Bridale, a quintain of this construction formed a part of it. "Marvellous," says Laneham, "were the martial acts that were done there that day; the bride-groom for pre-eminence had the first course at the Quintaine, brake his spear treshardiment; but his mare in his manage did a little so titubate, that much ado had his manhood to sit in his saddle, and to scape the foil of a fall: With the help of his hand, yet he recovered himself, and lost not his stirrups (for he had none to his saddle); had no hurt as it hapt, but only that his girth burst, and lost his pen and inkhorn that he was ready to weep for; but his handkerchief, as good hap was, found he safe at his girdle; that cheered him somewhat, and had good regard it should not be filed. For though heat and coolness upon sundry occasions made him sometime to sweat, and sometime rheumatic; yet durst he be bolder to blow his nose and wipe his face with the flappet of his father's jacket, than with his mother's muffler: 'tis a goodly matter, when youth is mannerly brought up, in fatherly love and motherly awe.

"Now, Sir, after the bride-groom had made his course, ran the rest of the band a while, in some order; but soon after, tag and rag, cut and long tail; where the specialty of the sport was to see how some for his slackness had a good bob with the bag; and some for his haste to topple down right, and come tumbling to the post: Some striving so much at the first setting out, that it seemed a question between the man and the beast, whether the course should be made a horseback or a foot: and put forth with the spurs, then would run his race by us among the thickest of the throng, that down came they together hand over head: Another, while he directed his course to the quintain, his jument would carry him to a mare among the people; so his horse as amorous as himself adventurous: An other, too, run and miss the quintain with his staff, and hit the board with his head!

"Many such gay games were there among these riders: who by and by after, upon a greater courage, left their quintaining, and ran one at another. There to see the stern countenances, the grim looks, the couragious attempts, the desperate adventures, the dangerous courses, the fierce encounters, whereby the buff at the man, and the counterbuff at the horse, that both sometime came toppling to the ground. By my troth, Master Martin, 'twas a lively pastime; I believe it would have moved some man to a right merry mood, though it had been told him his wife lay a dying."[303:A]

This passage presents us with a lively picture of what the rural quintain was in the days of Elizabeth, an exercise which continued to amuse our rustic forefathers for more than a century after the princely festival of Kenelworth. Minshieu, who published his Dictionary in 1617, the year subsequent to Shakspeare's death, informs us that "A quintaine or quintelle," was "a game in request at marriages, when Jac and Tom, Dic, Hob and Will, strive for the gay garland." Randolph in 1642, alluding in one of his poems to the diversions of the Spaniards, says

"Foot-ball with us may be with them balloone; As they at tilts, so we at quintaine runne; And those old pastimes relish best with me, That have least art, and most simplicitie;"

Plott in his History of Oxfordshire, first printed in 1677, mentions the Quintain as the common bridal diversion of the peasantry at Deddington in that county; "it is now," he remarks, "only in request at marriages, and set up in the way for young men to ride at as they carry home the bride, he that breaks the board being counted the best man[304:A];" and in a satire published about the year 1690, under the title of The Essex Champion; or the famous History of Sir Billy of Billerecay, and his Squire Ricardo, intended as a ridicule, after the manner of Cervantes, on the romances then in circulation, the hero, Sir Billy, is represented as running at a quintain, such as Stowe has drawn in his Survey, but with the most unfortunate issue, for "taking his launce in his hand, he rid with all his might at the Quinten, and hitting the board a full blow, brought the sand-bag about with such force, as made him measure his length on the ground."[304:B]

Most of the numerous athletic diversions of the country remaining what they were two centuries ago, cannot, in accordance with our plan, require any comment or detail; two, however, now, we believe, entirely obsolete, and which serve to mark the manners of the age, it will be necessary to introduce. Mercutio, in a contest of pleasantry and banter with Romeo, exclaims, "Nay, if thy wits run the wild-goose chace, I have done."[304:C]

This barbarous species of horse-race, which has been named from its resemblance to the flight of wild-geese, was a common diversion among the country-gentlemen of this period; Burton, indeed, calls it one of "the disports of great men[305:A];" a confession which does no honour to the age, for this elegant amusement consisted in two horses starting together, and he who proved the hindmost rider was obliged to follow the foremost over whatever ground he chose to carry him, that horse which could distance the other winning the race.

Another sport still more extraordinary and rude, and much in vogue in the south-western counties, was, one of the numerous games with the ball, and termed HURLING. Of this there were two kinds, hurling to the Goales and hurling to the Country, and both have been described with great accuracy by Carew, in his Survey of Cornwall. The first is little more than a species of hand-ball, but the second, when represented as the amusement of gentlemen, furnishes a curious picture of the civilisation of the times.

"In hurling to the country," says Carew, "two or three, or more parishes agree to hurl against two or three other parishes. The matches are usually made by gentlemen, and their goales are either those gentlemen's houses, or some towns or villages three or four miles asunder, of which either side maketh choice after the nearnesse of their dwellings; when they meet, there is neyther comparing of numbers nor matching of men, but a silver ball is cast up, and that company which can catch and carry it by force or slight to the place assigned, gaineth the ball and the victory.—Such as see where the ball is played give notice, crying 'ware east,' 'ware west,' as the same is carried. The hurlers take their next way over hilles, dales, hedges, ditches; yea, and thorow bushes, briars, mires, plashes, and rivers whatsoever, so as you shall sometimes see twenty or thirty lie tugging together in the water scrambling and scratching for the ball."[305:B]

The domestic, amusements in the country being nearly, if not altogether, the same with those which prevailed in the city, we shall, with one exception, refer the consideration of them to another part of this work. The pastime for which this distinction is claimed, was known by the name of SHOVEL-BOARD, or Shuffle-board, and was so universally prevalent throughout the kingdom, during the era of which we are treating, that there could scarcely be found a nobleman's or gentleman's house in the country in which this piece of furniture was not a conspicuous object. The great hall was the place usually assigned for its station, though in some places, as, for instance, at Ludlow Castle, a room was appropriated to this purpose, called The Shovell-Board Room.[306:A]

The table necessary for this game, now superseded by the use of Billiards, was frequently upon a very large and expensive scale. "It is remarkable," observes Dr. Plott, "that in the hall at Chartley the shuffle-board table, though ten yards one foot and an inch long, is made up of about two hundred and sixty pieces, which are generally about eighteen inches long, some few only excepted, that are scarce a foot; which, being laid on longer boards for support underneath, are so accurately joined and glewed together, that no shuffle-board whatever is freer from rubbs or casting.—There is a joynt also in the shuffle-board at Madeley Manor exquisitely well done."[306:B]

The mode of playing at Shovel-board is thus described by Mr. Strutt:—"At one end of the shovel-board there is a line drawn across, parallel with the edge, and about three or four inches from it; at four feet distance from this line another is made, over which it is necessary for the weight to pass when it is thrown by the player, otherwise the go is not reckoned. The players stand at the end of the table, opposite to the two marks above mentioned, each of them having four flat weights of metal, which they shove from them, one at a time, alternately: and the judgment of the play is, to give sufficient impetus to the weight to carry it beyond the mark nearest to the edge of the board, which requires great nicety, for if it be too strongly impelled, so as to fall from the table, and there is nothing to prevent it, into a trough placed underneath for its reception, the throw is not counted; if it hangs over the edge, without falling, three are reckoned towards the player's game; if it lie between the line and the edge, without hanging over, it tells for two; if on the line, and not up to it, but over the first line, it counts for one. The game, when two play, is generally eleven; but the number is extended when four, or more, are jointly concerned."[307:A]

It appears from a passage in the Merry Wives of Windsor, that, in Shakspeare's time, the broad shillings of Edward VI. were made use of at shovel-board instead of the more modern weights. Falstaff is enquiring of Pistol if he picked master Slender's purse, a query to which Slender thus replies: "Ay, by these gloves, did he, (or I would I might never come in mine own great chamber again else,) of seven groats in mill-sixpences, and two Edward shovel-boards, that cost me two shillings and two pence a-piece of Yead Miller, by these gloves."[307:B] "That Slender means the broad shilling of one of our kings," remarks Mr. Malone, "appears from comparing these words with the corresponding passage in the old quarto: 'Ay by this handkerchief did he;—two faire shovel-board shillings, besides seven groats in mill-sixpences.'"[307:C]

Mr. Douce is of opinion that the game of shovel-board is not much older than the reign of Edward VI., and that it is only a variation, on a larger scale, of what was term'd SHOVE-GROAT, a game invented in the reign of Henry VIII., and described in the statutes, of his 33d year, as a new game.[307:D] Shove-groat was also played, as the name implies, with the coin of the age, namely silver groats, then as large as our modern shillings, and to this pastime and to the instrument used in performing it, Shakspeare likewise, and Jonson, allude; the first in the Second Part of King Henry IV., where Falstaff, threatening Pistol, exclaims, "Quoit him down, Bardolph, like a Shove-groat shilling:"[308:A] the second in Every Man in his Humour, where Knowell, speaking of Brain-worm, says that he has "translated begging out of the old hackney pace, to a fine easy amble, and made it run as smooth off the tongue as a shove-groat shilling."[308:B] That the game of Shovel-board is subsequent, in point of time, to the diversion of Shove-groat, is probable from the circumstance noticed by Mr. Douce, that no coin termed shovel-groat is any where to be found, and consequently the era of the broad shilling may be deemed that also of shovel-board. Mr. Strutt supposes the modern game of Justice Jervis to resemble, in all essential points, the ancient Shove-groat.[308:C]

Between the juvenile sports which were common in the reigns of Elizabeth and James, and those of the present day, little variation or discrepancy, worth noticing, can be perceived; they were, under slight occasional alterations of form and name, equally numerous, trifling, or mischievous, and Shakspeare has now and then referred to them, for the purposes of illustration or similitude; he has, in this manner, alluded to the well-known games of leap-frog[308:D]; handy-dandy[308:E]; wildmare, or balancing[308:F]; flap-dragons[308:G]; loggats, or kittle-pins[308:H]; country-base, or prisoner's bars[308:I]; fast and loose[308:J]; nine men's morris, or five-penny morris[308:K]; cat in a bottle[308:L]; figure of eight[308:M], &c. &c.; games which, together with those derived from balls, marbles, hoops, &c. require no description, and which, deviating little in their progress from age to age, can throw no material light on the costume of early life. Very few diversions, indeed, peculiar to our youthful days have become totally obsolete; among these, however, may be mentioned one, which, from the obscurity resting on it, its peculiarity, and former popularity, is entitled to some distinction. We allude to the diversion of BARLEY-BREAKE, of the mode of playing which, Mr. Strutt confesses himself ignorant, and merely quotes the following lines from Sidney, as given by Johnson in his Dictionary:

"By neighbours prais'd, she went abroad thereby, At barley-brake her sweet swift feet to try."[309:A]

Barley-breake was, however, among young people, one of the most popular amusements of the reigns of Elizabeth and James the First, and continued so until the austere zeal of the Puritans occasioned its suppression: thus Thomas Randall, in "An Eclogue" on the diversions of Cotswold Hills, complains that

"Some melancholy swaines, about have gone, To teach all zeale, their owne complection— These teach that dauncing is a Jezabell, And Barley-breake, the ready way to hell."[309:B]

Before this puritanical revolution took place, barley-breake was a common theme with the amatory bards of the day, and allusions to it were frequent in their songs, madrigals, and ballets. With one of these, written about 1600, we shall present the reader, as a pleasing specimen of the light poetry of the age:—

"Now is the month of maying, When merry lads are playing; Each with his bonny lasse, Upon the greeny grasse.

The spring clad all in gladnesse Doth laugh at winter's sadnesse; And to the bagpipe's sound, The nymphs tread out their ground.

Fye then, why sit wee musing, Youth's sweet delight refusing; Say daintie Nimphs and speake, Shall wee play barly-breake."[310:A]

There were two modes of playing at barley-breake, and of these one was rather more complex than the other. Mr. Gifford, in a note on the Virgin-Martyr of Massinger, where this game, in its more elaborate form, is referred to, remarks, that "with respect to the amusement of barley-break, allusions to it occur repeatedly in our old writers; and their commentators have piled one parallel passage upon another, without advancing a single step towards explaining what this celebrated pastime really was. It was played by six people (three of each sex), who were coupled by lot. A piece of ground was then chosen, and divided into three compartments, of which the middle one was called hell. It was the object of the couple condemned to this division, to catch the others, who advanced from the two extremities; in which case a change of situation took place, and hell was filled by the couple who were excluded by pre-occupation, from the other places. In this "catching," however, there was some difficulty, as, by the regulations of the game, the middle couple were not to separate before they had succeeded, while the others might break hands whenever they found themselves hard pressed. When all had been taken in turn, the last couple was said to be in hell, and the game ended."[310:B]

That this description, explanatory of the passage in Massinger,

"He is at barley-break, and the last couple Are now in hell,"

is accurate and full, will derive corroboration from a scarce pamphlet entitled "Barley-breake, or a Warning for Wantons," published in 1607, and which contains a curious representation of this amusement.

——— "On a time the lads and lasses came, Entreating Elpin that she[311:A] might goe play; He said she should (Euphema was her name) And then denyes: yet needs she must away.

To Barley-breake they roundly then 'gan fall, Raimon, Euphema had unto his mate; For by a lot he won her from them all; Wherefore young Streton doth his fortune hate.

But yet ere long he ran and caught her out, And on the back a gentle fall he gave her; It is a fault which jealous eyes spie out, A maide to kisse before her jealous father.

Old Elpin smiles, but yet he frets within, Euphema saith, she was unjustly cast. She strives, he holds, his hand goes out and in: She cries, away! and yet she holds him fast.

Till sentence given by an other maid, That she was caught according to the law; The voice whereof this civill quarrell staid, And to his mate each lusty lad 'gan draw.

Euphema now with Streton is in hell, (For so the middle roome is alwaies cald) He would for ever, if he might, there dwell; He holds it blisse with her to be inthrald.

The other run, and in their running change; Streton 'gan catch, and then let goe his hold; Euphema like a doe, doth swiftly range, Yet taketh none, although full well she could,

And winkes on Streton, he on her 'gan smile, And fame would whisper something in her eare; She knew his mind, and bid him use a wile, As she ran by him, so that none did heare."[311:B]

The simpler mode of conducting this pastime, as it was practised in Scotland, has been detailed by Dr. Jamieson, who tells us, that it was "a game generally played by young people in a corn-yard. One stack is fixed on as the dule, or goal; and one person is appointed to catch the rest of the company, who run out from the dule. He does not leave it till they are all out of his sight. Then he sets off to catch them. Any one who is taken cannot run out again with his former associates, being accounted a prisoner; but is obliged to assist his captor in pursuing the rest. When all are taken, the game is finished; and he who was first taken is bound to act as catcher in the next game."[312:A] It is evident, from our old poetry, that this style of playing at barley-breake was also common in England, and especially among the lower orders in the country.

It may be proper to add, at the close of this chapter, that a species of public diversion was, during the Elizabethan period, supported by each parish, for the purpose of innocently employing the peasantry upon a failure of work from weather or other causes. To this singular though laudable custom Shakspeare alludes in the Twelfth Night, where Sir Toby says, "He's a coward, and a coystril, that will not drink to my niece, 'till his brains turn o' the toe like a [312:B]parish-top." "This," says Mr. Steevens, "is one of the customs now laid aside;" and he adds, in explanation, that "a large top was kept in every village, to be whipped in frosty weather, that the peasants might be kept warm by exercise, and out of mischief, while they could not work;" a diversion to which Fletcher likewise refers in his Night-Walker, and which has given rise to the proverbial expression of sleeping like a town-top.

From this rapid sketch of the diversions of the country, as they existed in Shakspeare's time, it will be immediately perceived that not many have become obsolete, and of those which have undergone some change, the variations have not been such as materially to obscure their origin or previous constitution. The object of this chapter being, therefore, only to mark what was peculiar in rural pastime to the age under consideration, and not to notice what had suffered little or no modification, its articles, especially if we consider the nature of the immediately preceding section, (and that nearly all amusements common to both town and country were referred to a future part,) could not be either very numerous, or require any very extended elucidation.

What might be necessary in the minute and isolated task of the commentator, would be tedious and superfluous in a design which professes, while it gives a distinct and broad outline of the complexion of the times, to preserve among its parts an unrelaxed attention to unity and compression.

FOOTNOTES:

[247:A] MS. Harl. Libr., No. 2057, apud Strutt's Customs, &c.

[247:B] Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, 8th edit. fol. 1676. p. 169, 170.

[247:C] Ibid. p. 172.

[247:D] Ibid. p. 174.

[247:E] Ibid. p. 172.

[248:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 22. note 6.

[249:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 21, 22. 25, 26.

[249:B] Pope's Preface to his edition of Shakspeare, vide Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 183.

[249:C] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 25, note 3.

[250:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 26, note.

[250:B] Ibid. vol. xviii. p. 130, 131.

[250:C] Ibid. vol. xviii. p. 131. note 7.

[250:D] Poetaster, 1601, vide Ben Jonson's Works, fol. edit. of 1640, vol. i. p. 267.

[251:A] Apology for Actors, 1612.

[251:B] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xi. p. 307.

[251:C] Vide Malone's note in Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xi. p. 307.

[251:D] By the statute of the 39 Eliz. any baron of the realm might license a company of players; but by the statute of first James I. "it is declared and enacted, that from thenceforth no authority given, or to be given or made, by any baron of this realm, or any other honourable personage of greater degree, unto any interlude players, minstrels, jugglers, bearward, or any other idle person or persons whatsoever, using any unlawful games or plays, to play or act, should be available to free or discharge the said persons, or any of them, from the pains and punishments of rogues, of vagabonds, and sturdy beggars, in the said statutes (those of Eliz.) mentioned."

[252:A] A character in Gammar Gurtons Needle, says Mr. Strutt, a comedy supposed to have been written A. D. 1517, declares he will go "and travel with young Goose, the motion-man, for a puppet-player."[252:E] This reference, however, is inaccurate, for after a diligent perusal of the comedy in question, no such passage is to be found.

[252:B] Ben Jonson's Works, fol. edit. 1640, vol. ii. p. 77. act v. sc. 4.

[252:C] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 112.

[252:D] Vide Malone on the Chronological Order of Shakspeare's Plays. Reed's Shakspeare, vol. 2. p. 304.

[252:E] Strutt's Sports and Pastimes, p. 150, note b.

[253:A] Chalmers's Supplemental Apology, p. 323, note s.

[253:B] Strutt's Sports and Pastimes, p. 20.

[253:C] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 304, and Chalmers's Apology, p. 324, note.

[254:A] Athenæ Oxon. vol. ii. p. 812.

[254:B] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xii. p. 124.

[254:C] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. v. p. 16.

[254:D] They were given him by Endymion Porter, the King's servant.

[254:E] Biographical History of England, vol. ii. p. 399, 8vo. edit. of 1775.

[255:A] Strutt's Sports and Pastimes, p. 20, and Heath's Description of Cornwall, 1750.

[255:B] "About the year 750, Winifrid, or Boniface, a native of England, and archbishop of Mons, acquaints Ethelbald, a king of Kent, that he has sent him, one hawk, two falcons and two shields. And Hedilbert, a king of the Mercians, requests the same archbishop Winifrid to send him two falcons which have been trained to kill cranes. See Epistol. Winifrid. (Bonifac.) Mogunt. 1605. 1629. And in Bibl. Patr. tom. vi., and tom. xiii. p. 70."—Warton's Hist. of English Poetry, vol. ii. p. 221.

[256:A] Jonson's Works, fol. vol. i. p. 6. act i. sc. 1.

[256:B] Brathwait's English Gentleman, 2d edit. 1633. p. 220.

[257:A] "The Booke of Faulconrie, or Hawking, for the onely delight and pleasure of all Noblemen and Gentlemen: collected out of the best aucthors, as wel Italians as Frenchmen, and some English practises withall concernyng Faulconrie, the contentes whereof are to be seene in the next page folowyng. By Geo. Turbervile, Gentleman. Nocet empta dolore voluptas. Imprinted at London for Chr. Barker, at the signe of the Grashoper in Paules Church-yarde, 1575." To this was added, the "Noble Arte of Venerie or Hunting;" and a re-impression of both, "newly revived, corrected, and augmented with many additions proper to these present times," was published by Thomas Purfoot, in 1611.

Gervase Markham published in 1595 the edition of Dame Julyana Barne's Treatise on Hawking and Hunting, which we have formerly noticed, and which was first printed by Caxton, and afterwards by Winkin De Worde; and in 1615, the first edition of his Country Contentments, which contains a treatise on Hawking; a work so popular, that it reached thirteen or fourteen editions.

Edmund Best, who trained and sold hawks, printed a treatise on Hawks and Hawking in 1619.

[259:A] Brathwait's English Gentleman, 2d edit. 1633. p. 201-203.

[259:B] Henry Peacham, who remarks of Hawking, that it is a recreation "very commendable and befitting a Noble or Gentleman to exercise," adds, that "by the Canon Law, Hawking was forbidden unto Clergie." The Compleat Gentleman, 2d. edit. p. 212, 213.

[260:A] Vide Quaternio, or a Fourefold Way to a Happie Life, set forth in a Dialogue betweene a Countryman and a Citizen, a Divine and a Lawyer. Per Tho. Nash, Philopolitean, 1633.

[260:B] English Gentleman, p. 200.

[262:A] Quaternio, 1633. It is, perhaps, scarcely necessary to add, that the writer of this work must not be confounded with Thos. Nash the author of Pierce Penniless, who died before 1606.

[262:B] To bind with is to tire or seize.—Gentleman's Recreation.

[263:A] To cancelier. "Canceller is when a high-flown hawk in her stooping, turneth two or three times upon the wing, to recover herself before she seizeth her prey."—Gentleman's Recreation.

[263:B] Gifford's Massinger, vol. iv. p. 136, 137.—The Guardian, from which this passage is taken, was licensed in October 1633.

[264:A] Dibdin's Typographical Antiquities, vol. ii. p. 57, 58.

[264:B] Hall's Life of Henry VIII. sub an. xvj.

[265:A] Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk.

[265:B] Anonymous MS., entitled "Merry Passages and Jeasts." Bibl. Harl. 6395. Art. cccliv.

[265:C] Merry Passages and Jeasts, art. ccxxiii.

[266:A] The Falconer was sometimes denominated the Ostringer or Sperviter: "they be called Ostringers," says Markham, "which are the keepers of Goshawkes or Tercelles, and those which keepe Sparrow-hawkes or Muskets are called Sperviters, and those which keepe any other kinde of hawke being long-winged are termed Falconers." Gentleman's Academie or Booke of S. Alban's, fol. 8.

[266:B] Satyrical Essayes, Characters, &c., by John Stephens, 1615, 16mo. 1st edit.

[267:A] "All hawks," says Markham, "generally are manned after one manner, that is to say, by watching and keeping them from sleep, by a continuall carrying them upon your fist, and by a most familiar stroaking and playing with them, with the wing of a dead fowl, or such like, and by often gazing and looking them in the face, with a loving and gentle countenance, and so making them acquainted with the man.

"After your hawks are manned, you shall bring them to the Lure[267:D] by easie degrees, as first, making them jump unto the fist, after fall upon the lure, then come to the voice, and lastly, to know the voice and lure so perfectly, that either upon the sound of the one, sight of the other, she will presently come in, and be most obedient; which may easily be performed, by giving her reward when she doth your pleasure, and making her fast when she disobeyeth: short wing'd hawks shall be called to the fist only, and not to the lure; neither shall you use unto them the loudnesse and variety of voice, which you do to the long winged hawks, but only bring them to the fist by chiriping your lips together, or else by the whistle." Countrey Contentments, 11th edit. p. 30.

[267:B] Country Contentments, p. 29.

[267:C] Though it sometimes appears that the jesses were made of silk.

[267:D] An object stuffed like that kind of bird which the hawk was designed to pursue. The use of the lure was to tempt him back after he had flown.—Steevens.

[268:A] "These observations are taken from 'The Boke of Saint Albans;' a subsequent edition says, 'at least a note under.'"[268:D]

[268:B] "I am told, that silver being mixed with the metal, when the bells are cast, adds much to the sweetness of the sound; and hence probably the allusion of Shakspeare, when he says,

'How silver sweet sound lovers tongues by night.'"

[268:C] Strutt's Sports and Pastimes, p. 28.

[268:D] This subsequent edition, to which Mr. Strutt alludes, is probably that by Gervase Markham, who tells us under the head of "Hawkes belles:" "The bells which your hawke shal weare, looke in any wise that they be not too heavy, whereby they overloade hir, neither that one be heavier than an other, but both of like weight: looke also, that they be well sounding and shrill, yet not both of one sound, but one at least a note under the other." He adds "of spar-hawkes belles there is choice enough, and the charge little, by reason that the store thereof is great. But for goshawks sometimes belles of Millaine were supposed to bee the best, and undoubtedly they be excellent, for that they are sounded with silver, and the price of them is thereafter, but there be now," he observes, "used belles out of the lowe Countries which are approoved to be passing good, for they are principally sorted, they are well sounded, and sweet of ringing, with a pleasant shrilnesse, and excellently well lasting." Gentleman's Academie, fol. 13.

[269:A] These technical terms may admit of some explanation, from the following passage in Markham's edition of the Booke of St. Alban's, 1595, where speaking of the fowl being found in a river or pit, he adds, "if shee (the hawk) nyme or take the further side of the river or pit from you, then she slaieth the foule at fere juttie: but if she kill it on that side that you are on yourselfe; as many times it chanceth, then you shall say shee killed the foule at the jutty ferry: if your hawke nime the foule aloft, you shal say she tooke it at the mount. If you see store of mallards separate from the river and feeding in the fielde, if your hawke flee covertly under hedges, or close by the ground, by which means she nymeth one of them before they can rise, you shall say, that foule was killed at the querre." Gentleman's Academie, fol. 12.

[270:A] Ancient British Drama, vol. ii. p. 436.

[270:B] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xix. p. 387. Act iii. sc. 3.

[270:C] Ibid., vol. v. p. 339. Act iii. sc. 1.

[270:D] Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, fol. 8th edit. p. 152.

[271:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 135. Act iv. sc. 1.

[271:B] Ibid. vol. xx. p. 147. Act iii. sc. 2.

[271:C] Ibid. p. 93. Act ii. sc. 2.

[271:D] Ibid. vol. v. p. 126. Act iii. sc. 3.

[271:E] Fairy Queen, book i. cant. 11. stan. 34. "Eyes, or nias," says Mr. Douce, "is a term borrowed from the French niais, which means any young bird in the nest, avis in nido. It is the first of five several names by which a falcon is called during its first year." Illustrations, vol. i. p. 74.

[272:A] Censura Literaria, vol. x. p. 231.

[273:A] Complete Gentleman, 2nd edit., p. 212, 213.

[273:B] Dekkar's Villanies discovered by lanthorne and candle-light, &c. 1616.

[274:A] Vide Warton's Hist. of English Poetry, vol. ii. p. 221. note.

[274:B] MS. Cotton Library, Vespasianus, B. 12.

[274:C] MS. Digb. 182. Bibl. Bodl. Warton, vol. ii. p. 221. note m.

[275:A] The substance of this account is taken from The Maistre of the Game, written for the use of Prince Henry.

[276:A] Vide Censura Literaria, vol. x. p. 237, 238.

[276:B] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xx. p. 173. Act iii. sc. 5.

[276:C] In a work entitled "A Briefe Discourse of the true (but neglected) use of Charact'ring the degrees by their perfection, imperfection, and diminution, in measurable musicke, against the common practice and custome of these times. Examples whereof are exprest in the harmony of 4 voyces, concerning the pleasure of 5 usuall Recreations. 1. Hunting. 2. Hawking. 3. Dauncing. 4. Drinking. 5. Enamouring. By Thomas Ravenscroft, Bachelar of Musicke. London, printed by Edw. Allde for Tho. Adams, 1614. Cum privilegio Regali, 4to."

Puttenham refers to one Gray as the author of this ballad, who was in good estimation, he says, with King Henry, "and afterwards with the Duke of Sommerset Protectour, for making certaine merry ballades, whereof one chiefly was, The hunte it (is) up, the hunte is up." P. 12.

Ritson refers to another ballad, as the prototype of Shakspeare's line, which, he says, is very old, and commences thus:—

"The hunt is up, the hunt is up, And now it is almost day; And he that's a bed with another man's wife, It's time to get him away." Remarks critical and illustrative, &c., 1783, p. 183.

[278:A] Of the language formerly used by the huntsman to his dogs, a very curious description is given by Markham, in his modernised edition of the Booke of St. Albans, 1595.

"When the Huntsman," says he, "commeth to the kennell in the morning to couple up his hounds, and shall jubet once or twice to awake the dogs: opening the kennell doore, the Huntsman useth some gentle rating, lest in their hasty comming forth they should hurt one another: to which the Frenchman useth this worde, Arere, Arere, and we, sost, ho ho ho ho, once or twice redoubling the same, coupling them as they come out of the kennell. And being come into the field, and having uncoupled, the Frenchman useth, hors de couple avant avant, onse or twise with soho three times together: wee use to jubet once or twice to the dogges, crying, a traile a traile, there dogges there, and the rather to make the dogs in trailing to hold close together striking uppon some Brake crie soho. And if the hounds have had rest, and being over lustie, doe beginne to fling away, the Frenchmen use to crie, swef ames swef, redoubling the same, with Arere ames ho: nowe we to the same purpose use to say, sost ho, heere againe ho, doubling the same, sometimes calling them backe againe with jubet or hallow: poynting with your hunting staffe upon the ground, saying soho.

"And if some one of the hounds light upon a pure scent, so that by the manner of his eager spending you perceive it is very good, yet shall the same hounds crying, there, now there: and to put the rest of the crie in to him, you shall crie, ho avant avant, list a Talbot, list list there. To which the French man useth, Oyes a Talbot le vailant oyes oyes, trove le coward, in the same manner with little difference. And if you find by your hounds where a Hare hath beene at relefe, if it be in the time of greene corne, and if your hounds spend uppon the troile merily, and make a goodly crie, then shall the Huntsman blow three motes with his horne, which hee may sundry times use with discretion, when he seeth the houndes have made away: A double, and make on towards the seate; now if it be within some field or pasture where the Hare hath beene at relefe, let the Huntsman cast a ring with his houndes to finde where she hath gone out, which if the houndes light uppon, he shall crie, There boyes there, that tat tat, hoe hicke, hicke, hicke avant, list to him list, and if they chance by their brain sicknesse to overshoote it, he shall call to his hounds, ho againe ho, doubling the same twice. And if undertaking it againe, and making it good, hee shall cheare his hounds: there, to him there, thats he, that tat tat, blowing a mote. And note, that this word soho is generally used at the view of any beast of Chase or Venerie: but indeede the word is properly saho, and not soho, but for the better pronuntiation and fulnes of the same we say soho not saho. Now the hounds running in full chase, the Frenchman useth to say, ho ho, or swef alieu douce alieu, and wee imitating them say, There boies, there avant there, to him there, which termes are in deede derived from their language."—Gentleman's Academie, fol. 32, 33. These appear to be the terms in use at the close of the sixteenth century; for he afterwards mentions that the "olde and antient Huntsmen had divers termes" which were not in his time "very needefull."

[280:A] Peck's Desiderata Curiosa, vol. ii. p. 164.

[280:B] Antiquarian Repertory, vol. i. p. 27.

[280:C] To take the assay or say, was to draw the knife along the belly of the deer, in order to ascertain how fat he was, and the operation was begun at the brisket.

[281:A] Chaloner's Prayze of Follie, 1577. The whole process of "undoing the Hart," may be seen in Markham's "Gentlemans Academie," fol. 35.

[281:B] Jonson apud Whalley, act i. sc. 6.

[281:C] Alluding to the Book of St. Albans, republished, under this title, in 1595, by Gervase Markham.

[283:A] Satyrical Essayes, &c. by John Stephens, 1615.

[284:A] Countrey Contentments, 1615.—11th edit. 1683, p. 7-9.

[284:B] Flews, the large chaps of a hound.

[284:C] Sanded, that is, of a sandy colour, the true denotement of a blood-hound.

[284:D] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 449-452, Midsummer-Night's Dream, act iv. sc. 1.

[285:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xix. p. 60. Act ii. sc. 2.

[285:B] Nichols's Progresses of Elizabeth, vol. i. Laneham's Letter, p. 12, original edition, p. 17, 18.

[286:A] Nichols's Progresses, vol. ii.

[286:B] "The true narration of the Entertainment of his Royall Majestie, from the time of his departure from Edenbrough, till his receiving at London; with all or the most special occurrences. Together with the names of those gentlemen whom his Majestie honoured with Knighthood." At London printed by Thomas Creede, for Thomas Millington, 1603. 4to.

[287:A] Memoirs, p. 35.

[287:B] Wilson's History of Great Britain, p. 106. fol. London, 1653.

[287:C] Osborn's Works, 8vo. ninth edit. 1689, p. 444.

[288:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. viii. p. 183. Act v. sc. 4.

[288:B] Ibid. vol. vi. p. 68.

[288:C] Chalmers's English Poets, vol. iv. p. 368. Poly-Olbion, song xxv.

[288:D] Chalmers's English Poets, vol. iv. p. 458. Nymphal vi.

[288:E] New Shreds of the Old Snare, by John Gee, 4to. p. 23. Vide Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vi. p. 68. note 9.

[289:A] Harleian MS. 2281.

[289:B] Jewel for Gentrie, Lond. 1614.

[289:C] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xv. p. 24. Henry VIII. act i. sc. 1.

[290:A] Mr. Haslewood, after much research, attributes to the pen of this ingenious lady only the following portions of De Worde's edit. of 1496:

1. A small portion of the treatise on Hawking. 2. The treatise upon Hunting. 3. A short list of the beasts of chace. 4. And another short one of beasts and fowls.

The public are much indebted to this elegant antiquary for an admirable fac-simile reprint of De Worde's rare and interesting volume.

[290:B] Burton has introduced, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, though without acknowledgment, the very words of this quotation.—Vide p. 169. 8th edit.

[291:A] The titles of these works are—"A Booke of Fishing with Hooke and Line, and of all other Instruments thereunto belonginge, made by L. M. 4to. Lond. 1590:" the 4th edit. of Mascall's Book, was reprinted in 1606—"Certain Experiments concerning Fish and Fruit, practised by John Taverner, Gentleman, and by him published for the benefit of others." 4to. London (printed for Wm. Ponsonby) 1600.—It would appear, from a note in Walton's Complete Angler, that there was an impression of Taverner's book of the same date with a different title, namely, "Approved experiments touching Fish and Fruit, to be regarded by the lovers of Angling."—Vide Bagster's edit. 1808. Life of Walton, p. 14. note.

A third was designated "The Pleasures of Princes, or Good Men's Recreations: containing a Discourse of the general Art of Fishing with the Angle, or otherwise: and of all the hidden Secrets belonging thereunto. 4to. Lond. 1614."

[293:A] This beautiful encomium has been quoted in Walton's Complete Angler, with many alterations, and some of them much for the worse; for instance, the very opening of the quotation is thus given:—

"Let me live harmlessly; and near the brink Of Trent or Avon have a dwelling-place—

and the conclusion of the fourth stanza:—

"The raging sea, beneath the vallies low, Where lakes, and rills, and rivulets do flow." Bagster's edit. p. 123.

[293:B] Gervase Markham, in his Art of Angling, not only recommends the same colours, but adds a caution which marks the rural dress of the day: "Let your apparel," says he, "be close to your body, without any new fashioned flashes, or hanging sleeves, waving loose, like sails about you." P. 59.

[293:C] The first edition of the Countrey Contentments, 1615, does not possess the Art of Angling; it probably appeared in the second, a year or two after; for the work was so popular that it rapidly ran through several impressions: the fifth is dated 1633.

[296:A] Countrey Contentments, 11th edit. p. 59-62.

[296:B] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vi. p. 78. Much Ado about Nothing, act iii. sc 1.

[297:A] To this effect, likewise, Col. Venables gives a decided testimony; for in the preface to his "Experienc'd Angler," first published in 1662, he declares, "if example (which is the best proof) may sway any thing, I know no sort of men less subject to melancholy than anglers, many have cast off other recreations and embraced it, but I never knew any angler wholly cast off (though occasions might interrupt) their affections to their beloved recreation;" and he adds, "if this art may prove a noble brave rest to my mind, 'tis all the satisfaction I covet."

[297:B] Walton's Complete Angler apud Bagster, p. 122.—"Let me take this opportunity," says Mr. Bowles, "of recommending the amiable and venerable Isaac Walton's Complete Angler; a work the most singular of its kind, breathing the very spirit of contentment, of quiet, and unaffected philanthropy, and interspersed with some beautiful relics of poetry, old songs, and ballads." Bowles's Pope, vol. i. p. 135.

[297:C] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xviii. p. 512. Cymbeline, act iii. sc. 2.

[298:A] Anatomy of Melancholy, p. 170. part ii. sat. 2. Mem. iv.

[298:B] Chalmers's English Poets, vol. v. p. 275. book iv. satire 3.

[298:C] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xi. p. 381. Henry IV. part i. act iv. sc. 1.

[299:A] The title is as follows: "A Discource of Horsemanshippe: wherein the breeding and ryding of Horses for service, in a breefe manner is more methodically sette downe then hath been heretofore, &c. Also the manner to chuse, trayne, ryde and dyet, both Hunting-horses and Running-horses: with all the secretes thereto belonging discovered. An arte never hearetofore written by any author. Bramo assai, poco spero, nulla chiegio." At London. Printed by John Charlewood for Richard Smith, 1593, 4to. Dedicated "To the Right Worshipfull, and his singular good father, Ma. Rob. Markham, of Cotham, in the County of Nottingham, Esq. by Jervis Markham. Licensed 29 January, 1592-3." Vide Herbert, v. 2. 1102.

[300:A] Cavelarice, or the arte and knowledge belonging to the Horse-ryder, 1607. Book ii. chap. 24.

[301:A] Survey of London, 4to. 1618, p. 145.

[301:B] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. viii. p. 29.

[301:C] Vide Pluvinel sur l'exercise de monter a cheval, part iii. p. 177. et Traite des Tournois, Joustes, &c. par Claude Fran. Menestrier, p. 264.

[303:A] Nichols's Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, vol. i. and of Laneham's Letter, p. 30-32.

[304:A] Natural Hist. of Oxfordshire, p. 200.

[304:B] Censura Literaria, vol. viii. p. 233, 234.

[304:C] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xx. p. 111. Act ii. sc. 4.

[305:A] Anatomy of Melancholy, 8th edit. p. 170.

[305:B] Carew's Survey of Cornwall, 1602, book i. p. 74.

[306:A] Vide Todd's Milton, 2d. edit. vol. vi. p. 192.

[306:B] Natural History of Staffordshire, p. 383.

[307:A] Sports and Pastimes, p. 264.

[307:B] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. v. p. 22.

[307:C] Ibid. vol. v. p. 23. note 2.

[307:D] Douce's Illustrations of Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 454, 455.

[308:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xii. p. 96.

[308:B] Whalley's Works of Ben Jonson, vol. i.

[308:C] Vide Sports and Pastimes, p. 267. edit. of 1810.

[308:D] Henry V., act v. sc. 2.

[308:E] Lear, act iv. sc. 6.

[308:F] Second Part of Henry IV., act ii. sc. 4.

[308:G] Love's Labour Lost, act v. sc. 1. and Second Part of Henry IV., act ii. sc. 4.

[308:H] Hamlet, act v. sc. 1.

[308:I] Cymbeline, act v. sc, 3.

[308:J] Anthony and Cleopatra, act iv. sc. 10.

[308:K] Midsummer-Night's Dream, act ii. sc. 2.

[308:L] Much Ado about Nothing, act i. sc. 1.

[308:M] Midsummer-Night's Dream, act ii. sc. 2.

[309:A] Sports and Pastimes, p. 338.

[309:B] Annalia Dubrensia, 1636, c. iii.

[310:A] Cantus of Thomas Morley, the first booke of ballets to five voyces.

[310:B] Massinger's Works, by Gifford, vol. i. p. 104.

[311:A] His daughter.

[311:B] "Barley-breake, or a Warning for Wantons. Written by W. N., Gent. Printed at London by Simon Stafford, dwelling in the Cloth-fayre, neere the Red Lyon, 1607. 4to. 16 leaves." Vide British Bibliographer, vol. i. p. 65.—This poem has been attributed, notwithstanding the initials, to Nicholas Breton.

[312:A] Jamieson's Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language, 1808.

[312:B] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. v. p. 248.