rights of fishing in the Severn at Bridgnorth, and who obtained a bull from Pope Honorius confirming them in their rights. In 1160 the Abbot of Salop, with the consent of his chapter, is found granting to Philip Fitz-Stephen and his heirs the fishery of Sutton (piscarium de Sutana), and lands near the said fishery. These monks also had fisheries at Binnal, a few miles from Willey; and it is well known that they introduced into our rivers several varieties of fish not previously common thereto, but which now afford sport to the angler.

Fishing, it is true, may have been followed more as a remunerative exercise by some members of these religious houses, still it did not fail to commend itself as an attractive art and a harmless recreation congenial to a spirit of contemplation and reflection to many distinguished ecclesiastics. That the Severn of that day abounded in fish much more than at present is shown by Bishop Lyttleton, who takes some pains to describe it at Arley, and who explains the construction of the coracle and its uses in fishing, the only difference between it both then and now, and that of early British times, being that the latter was covered with a horse's hide.

A jury, empannelled for the purpose of estimating the value of Arley manor upon the death of one of its proprietors, gave the yearly rental of its fishery at 6s. 8d.,—a large sum in comparison with the value of sixty acres of land, stated to have been 10s., or with the rent of a ferry, which was put down at sixpence. There must have been fine fishing then. Trout were plentiful, so were salmon; there were no locks or artificial weirs to obstruct the attempts of fish still true to the instinct of their ancestors-to beat the tide in an upward summer excursion in the direction of its source. the part of the river so valued "abounded in fish."

The document states that

NOTE.-The Bishop of Worcester, by his regulations for the Priory of Little Malvern, in 1323, enjoins the prior not to fish in the stew set apart from ancient times for the recreation of the sick, unless manifest utility, to be approved by the Chapter, should sanction it; in which case he was, at a fit opportunity, to replace the fish which he caught.

We fancy it is not difficult to recognise a growing feeling against that separation of religion, recreation, and health which unfortunately now exists, and in favour of re-uniting the three; and we are persuaded that the sooner this takes place the better for the nation.

CHAPTER I.

THE MARSH AND FOREST PERIODS.

Early Features of the Country-The Hawk an acquisition to Sportsmen-Hawk aeries-Hawks according to Degrees Brook and other kinds of Hawking-Hawking and Hunting—A Shropshire Historian's Charge against the Conqueror-Bishops and their Clergy as much given to the Sport as LaymenThe Rector of Madeley-The Merrie Days, &c.

DIVERSIFIED by wood and moor, by lake and sedgy pool, dense flocks of wild fowl of various kinds at one time afforded a profusion of winged game; and

the keen eye and sharp talons of the hawk no doubt pointed it out as a desirable acquisition to the sportsman long ere he succeeded in pressing it into his service; indeed it must have been a

marked advance in the art when

he first availed himself of its

instinct. Old records supply materials for judg

ing of the estimation in which this bird was held by our ancestors, it being not uncommon to find persons holding tenements or paying fines in lieu of service to the lord of the fee by rendering a sore sparrow-hawk—a hawk in its first year's plumage. Stringent restrictions upon the liberty the old Roman masters of the country allowed with respect to wild fowl were imposed; the act of stealing a hawk, and that of taking her eggs, being punishable by imprisonment for a year and a day. The highborn, with birds bedecked with hoods of silk, collars of gold, and bells of even weight, but of differ

ent sound, appeared according to their rank-a ger-falcon for a king, a falcon gentle for a prince, a falcon of the rock for a duke, a janet for a knight, a merlin for a lady, and a lamere for a squire. From close-pent manor and high-walled castle, to outspread plain and expansive lake or river

bank, the gentry of the day sought perditch and plover, heron and wild fowl, many of which the fowling-piece has since driven from their haunts, and some as the bustard and the bittern, the egret and the crane-into extinction.

Mention is often made of hawk aeries, as at Little Wenlock, and in connection with districts within the jurisdiction of Shropshire forests, which seem to have been jealously guarded. The use of the birds, too, appears to have been very much restricted down to the time that the forest-charter, enabling all freemen to ply their hawks, was wrung from King John, when a sport which before had been the pride of the rich became the privilege of the poor. It was at one time so far a national pastime that an old writer asserts that " every degree had its peculiar hawk, from the emperor down to the holy-water clerk."* The sport seems to have divided itself into field-hawking, pond-hawking, brook-andriver hawking; into hawking on horseback and hawking on foot. In foot hawking the sportsman carried a pole, with which to leap the brook, into which he sometimes fell, as Henry VIII. did upon his head in the mud, in which he would have been

* Appendix A.