The disabling dogs, which might be necessary for keeping
flocks and herds, from running at the deer, was called
“lawing”, and was in general use.
The Charter of the Forest designed to lessen those
evils, declares that inquisition, or view, for lawing
dogs, shall be made every third year, and shall be
then done by the view and testimony of lawful men,
not otherwise; and they whose dogs shall be then found
unlawed, shall give three shillings for mercy, and
for the future no man’s ox shall be taken for
lawing. Such lawing also shall be done by the
assize commonly used, and which is, that three claws
shall be cut off without the ball of the right foot.
See on this subject the Historical Essay on the Magna
Charta of King John, (a most beautiful volume), by
Richard Thomson.
Note B.—–Negro Slaves.
The severe accuracy of some critics has objected to
the complexion of the slaves of Brian de Bois-Guilbert,
as being totally out of costume and propriety.
I remember the same objection being made to a set
of sable functionaries, whom my friend, Mat Lewis,
introduced as the guards and mischief-doing satellites
of the wicked Baron, in his Castle Spectre. Mat
treated the objection with great contempt, and averred
in reply, that he made the slaves black in order to
obtain a striking effect of contrast, and that, could
he have derived a similar advantage from making his
heroine blue, blue she should have been.
I do not pretend to plead the immunities of my order
so highly as this; but neither will I allow that the
author of a modern antique romance is obliged to confine
himself to the introduction of those manners only
which can be proved to have absolutely existed in
the times he is depicting, so that he restrain himself
to such as are plausible and natural, and contain no
obvious anachronism. In this point of view, what
can be more natural, than that the Templars, who,
we know, copied closely the luxuries of the Asiatic
warriors with whom they fought, should use the service
of the enslaved Africans, whom the fate of war transferred
to new masters? I am sure, if there are no precise
proofs of their having done so, there is nothing, on
the other hand, that can entitle us positively to
conclude that they never did. Besides, there
is an instance in romance.
John of Rampayne, an excellent juggler and minstrel,
undertook to effect the escape of one Audulf de Bracy,
by presenting himself in disguise at the court of
the king, where he was confined. For this purpose,
“he stained his hair and his whole body entirely
as black as jet, so that nothing was white but his
teeth,” and succeeded in imposing himself on
the king, as an Ethiopian minstrel. He effected,
by stratagem, the escape of the prisoner. Negroes,
therefore, must have been known in England in the
dark ages.*
* Dissertation on Romance and Minstrelsy, prefixed
to * Ritson’s Ancient Metrical Romances, p.
clxxxvii.
