Related article: and conies, on pain of a year's imprisonment. Capital punish- ment and mutilation for offences against forest law had been long abolished at this time. Passing over several laws relating to deer and hawking and hawks, we come to the year 1495, when Henry VII. earned the respect of shooting men for all time by legislation in favour of ** fesauntes and part- ryches.*' This Act (11 Hy. VII. c. 17) commends itself to us by its pleasing frankness ; it recognised that game possessed not only a monetary, but a sporting value. 346 baily's magazine. [Mat To summarise it briefly, the Methotrexate Rheumatrex statute declared that — " divers persons having little substance to live upon frequently take pheasants and partridges >frilh n«ts, snares and other engines u|K)n the manors of lords and others without leave, whereby the owners lose pleasure and disport ihein«elves, their friends and servants atiout hawking, hunt- ing, and taking the same, also ihe profit and avail that by the occasion should grow (accrue) to their households to the ' grete hurt of all lordes and gentlemen and others having any grete livelode' (livelihood).*' The Act proceeded to declare the unsanctioned taking of phea- sants and partridges on another's land an offence punishable by a fine of ;^io ; corresponding to ;^I40, or possibly more, at the present day. Mr. Greener, in his admirable book, ** The Gun and its De- velopment,'* says : — ** As a sport- ing weapon the gun dates from the invention of the wheel-lock," and that the wheel-lock proper was invented in 15 15 at Nuremberg. It was some little time before the potentialities of hand firearms in relation to sport were recognised by the English legislature. Henry VIII., in the third year of his reign (15 12), passed an Act forbidding his subjects to possess either crossbows or "hand gonnes" save for the purpose of defending their houses ; and about 1542 another statute was promul- gated which has more direct bearing on sport. It is abun- dantly clear, from the wording of this law, that poachers had found out the merits of small firearms, and used them with effect ; for the preamble states that inasmuch as evil-disposed persons shoot with crossbows and ** little short hand guns and little hagbuts," to the great peril and continual fear of, among others, keepers of forests, chases and parks, no hand gun less than one yard in length over all might be lawfully made, and no hagbut or demyhake (carbine or pistol) of less than three-quarters of a yard long. The same statute also forbids anyone to order a servant to shoot at deer, fowls, or anything other than an earth bank with cross- bow or firearms unless under royal licence, which specified the beast or fowl the licensee might have shot for him. This clause suggests that the nobles and gentlemen of the time would not condescend to use such weapons as crossbows and firearms. It will be convenient here to make a short cast Order Rheumatrex forward and examine an Act passed by Edward VI. in 1548. This curious law is en- titled ** Purchase Rheumatrex Online An Acte against the shoot- ing of hayle shot." It declares that an infinite Rheumatrex Cost quantity of fowl and much game is killed owing to the fashion which has grown up of ** shooting of hayle shot," which game is thereby destroyed and of benefit to no man. \Ve infer from this that the sportsman of the time was Order Rheumatrex Online in the habit of ** plastering "his birds. That he shot them sitting, and was not particular where they sat, the Act Rheumatrex Methotrexate tells us very plainly, for it says that — " No person under a Lord of Parliament shall shoot in any hand gun wilh'n ainr city or town at any fowl or other oaik. upon any church, house or dovecote: neither shall any person shoot in any place any hayle iBuy Cheap Rheumatrex more Pellotts(pellccs) than one at a time. Fortunate peers ! to them alone was reserved the precious privi- lege of ** potting " sparrows and allied small fowl and tame pigeons on the Buy Rheumatrex Online housetops! Let us hope they enjoyed this exclusive sport with some regard for the lives and limbs of their fellow-towns- men. At the same time, one cannot resist a feeling that the town-dwelling lieges of Edward VI. must have b<^n grateful for 1899] GAME PRESERVATION IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 347 a piece of legislation which put an end to shooting at large. It may be added that one reason assigned for prohibiting the use of small shot was that it ** Purchase Rheumatrex utterlie destroieth the certenties of shootynge which in warres is much requisite." Henry VIII., as we know, was a sportsman to the backbone. He it was who, in Rheumatrex Price 1523, made tracking hares in the snow illegal. This practice must have been carried to extremes if the Act (14 and 15 Hy. VIII. c. 10) does not overstate the case. It sets forth that the king and other noblemen of the realm '' have used and exercised the game of hunting of the hare " Buy Rheumatrex (the phrase- ology of these old statutes strikes quaintly on the modern ear) ** for their dispone and pleasure," which game of hunting is ** now decayed and almost utterlie dis- troied " Generic Rheumatrex by reason of the iniquities of divers persons who habitually track hares in the snow, and by that means kill ten, twelve, or sixteen in a day. Hares must have been numerous if a man could make a bag of sixteen by tracking ; the game Rheumatrex Online of hunting would have been improved by judicious thinning out. How- ever, the Act absolutely forbade " tracing in the snow," whether " with any dog, bech, bowe, or otherwys," the prescribed penalty being six shillings and eightpence. Sportsmen now a days regard ** tracking " with a dubious eye, but the practice is by no means neglected in some parts of the kingdom. In 1540 it was felt that the operations of poachers demanded attention, and to make an end of them an Act was passed abso- lutely forbidding the sale or pur- chase of pheasants on pain of a fine of six shillings and eightpence for each bird sold or bought, and of partridges on pain of half that fine. The only persons exempted were the officers and ministers of the royal households ; whence we