Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/325

 and Sentiments. 305 two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, witneffed this coarfe amufement, as we are affured by contemporary writers, with great fatisfaction. The fcene reprefented in our cut No. 200, which is copied from one of the carved feats, of the fourteenth century, in Gloucefter cathedral, is chiefly No. 200. Baiting the Bear. remarkable for the final degree of energy-the quiet dignity, in fact- difplayed by the actors in it. Hawking and hunting, efpecially the former, were the favourite recreations of the upper claffes. Hawking was confidered fo honourable an occupation, that people were in the cuſtom of carrying the hawk on their fifts when they walked or rode out, when they vifited or went to public affemblies, and even in church, as a mark of their gentility. In the illuminations we not unfrequently fee ladies and gentlemen feated in converfation, bearing their hawks on their hands. There was generally a perche in the chamber expreflly fet afide for the favourite bird, on which he was placed at night, or by day when the other occupations of its poffeffor rendered it inconvenient to carry it on the hand. Such a perche, with the hawk upon it, is reprefented in our cut No. 201, taken from a manufcript of the romance of "Meliadus," of the fourteenth century (MS. Addit. in the British Mufeum, No. 12,224). No. 201. A Hawk on its Perch. Hawking was in fome refpects a complicated fcience; numerous treatifes were written to explain and elucidate it, and it was fubmitted to strict laws. Much knowledge and skill were shown in choofing the hawks, and in breeding and training them, and the value of a well-chofen and well-trained bird was confiderable. When carried about by its mafter or R R miftrefs,