Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/132

 1 12 Hijiory of Domejiic Maimers among the Normans were extraordinarily addifted to the chace, to fecure which they adopted fevere meafures for preferving the woods and the beafts which inhabited them. Every reader of Enghlli hiftory knows the flory of the New Foreft, and of the fate which there befell the great patron of hunting — William Rufus. The Saxon Chronicle, in fumming up the charafter of William the Conqueror, tells us that he "made large forefts for the deer, and enaded laws therewith, lb that whoever killed a hart or a hind, lliould be blinded. As he forbade killing the deer, fo alfo the boars 5 and he loved the tall flags as if he were their father. He alfo appointed concerning the hares, that they fliould go free." The paffion of the ariftocracy for hunting was a bane to the rural population in more ways than one. Not only did they ride over the cultivated lands, and dellroy the crops, but wherever they came they lived at free quarter on the unfortunate population, ill-treating the men, and even outraging the females, at will. John of Salilbury complains bitterly of the cruelty with which the country-people were treated, if they happened to be fliort of provifions when the hunters came to their houfes. " If one of thefe hunters come acrofs your land," he fays, "immediately and humbly lay before him everything you have in your houfe, and go and buy of your neighbours whatever you are deficient of, or you may be plundered and thrown into prifon for your difrefpeft to your betters." The weapons generally ufed in hunting the fiag were bows and arrows. It was a barbed arrow which pierced the breaft of the fecond William, when he was hunting the flag in the wilds of the New Forefl. Our cut (No. 76), from the Trinity College Pfalter, reprcfents a horfeman hunting the flag. The noble animal is clofely followed by a brace of hounds, and juft as he is turning up a hill, the huntfman aims an arrow at him. As far as we can gather from the few authorities in which it is alluded to, the Saxon peafantry were not unpraftifed hands at the bow. We find them enjoying the chara6ter of good archers very foon after the Norman conquefi, under circumilances which feem to preclude the notion that they derived their knowledge of this arm from the invaders. In the miracles of St. Bega, printed by Mr. G. C. Tomlinlbn, in 1842, there is a fi:ory which Ihows the Ikill of the young men of Cumberland in archery