OF HAWKS AND HAWKING IN ESSEX
IN THE OLDEN TIME.*
By J. E. HARTING, F.L.S., F.Z.S. (Member of the British Ornithologists' Union).
MANY lands in Essex, as in other parts of England, were held
of old by the serjeanty of keeping hawks or finding hounds
for the king, when he should come that way upon a hunting tour,
or for the use of the lord of the manor, as the case might be.
At Tey Magna, the tenants of the manor were formerly bound
to maintain a number of hawks for the lord's use till they were a
year old, a service which was afterwards commuted into an annual
payment of thirty shillings, which in 1782 was paid to, and received
by, Thomas Astle, Esq.
At Saling, in Edward the First's time, Ralph Picot held land by
the serjeanty of keeping a Sparhawk (Sparverium) for the king, and
mewing it at his own proper cost.
At Ardeley, Baldwin Tillot held certain land in the town by a
similar tenure, per serjant. servandi nisum.
At Hallingbury, Walter de Hauville held land by the serjeanty
of falconry, which he had of the grant of King Richard I.
In 1304, Cicely, the widow of Humfrey de Hastings, held the
manor of White Roding by the service of keeping two lanner falcons
for heron-hawking, and a greyhound trained to make a heron rise,
from Michaelmas to the Purification, for the king's use (Morant's
Essex, vol. ii. p. 469).
At White Withings, Thomas de Longville and Beatrice, his wife
(daughter and heir of Philip de Hastings), kept two of the king's
lanners for the same period of the year, that is, from September to
February (Blount's Ancient Tenures, 4th Ed., 1815, p. 277).
When James I, who was a great sportsman, journeyed from
London to hunt and hawk at Newmarket, he used to go by way of
Waltham Cross and Royston, and the Exchequer accounts show the
great expenses which were incurred in these journeys. In 1624, for
* These remarks are extracted, by permission, from an interesting paper by Mr. Harting
read before a meeting of the Essex Field Club, held by invitation of Mr. Philip Colley, at
Writtle Park, Chelmsford, on May nth, 1889, and since printed in the Essex Naturalist (50. iii.)