Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/331

 and Sentiments. 3^1 in itfelf an extremely good exercife, in a gymnaftic point of view. The fair Ihooters feem to have employed bolts more frequently than the iharp-headed arrows ; but there is no want of examples in the illuminated manufcripts in which females are reprefented as ufing the fliarp-headed arrow, and fometimes they are ^^t^in (liooting at deer. This cuilom pre- vailed during a long period, and is alluded to not unfrequcntly at lb late a date as the lixteenth century. We learn from Leland's " Col- le6tanea" (vol. iv. p. 278), that when the princefs Margaret, daughter of Henry VII., was on her way to Scotland, a hunting-party was got up for her in the park at Alnwick, and that flie killed a buck with an arrow. Similar feats were at times performed by queen Elizabeth 5 but flie feems to have preferred the crofT-bow to the long-bow. The fcene reprefented in our cut No. 208 is from the lame manufcript ; the relative proportions No. 208. The Lady at the Rabhit-fVarrcn. of the dog and the rabbit feem to imply a latirical aim. Our next cut (No. 209), taken from MS. Reg. 2 B. vii., reprelents ladies hunting the liag. One, on horfeback, is winding the horn and Ilarting the game, in which the other plants her arrow moll: Ikilfully and fcientitically. The dog ufed on this occafion is intended to be a greyhound. It mult be remarked that, in all the illuminations of the period we are defcribing, which reprefent ladies engaged in hunting or hawking, when on horfeback they are invariably and unmillakeably reprefented riding allride. This is evidently the cafe in this group (No. 209). It has been already Ihown, in former chapters, that from a very early period it was a ufual cultom with the ladies to ride tideways, or with lide-faddles. Moll of the mediaeval artifts were lb entirely ignorant of perfpedive, and they