Falconry, like venery, had a distinctive and professional vocabulary, which it was necessary for every one who joined in hawking to understand, unless he wished to be looked upon as an ignorant yeoman.  “Flying the hawk is a royal pastime,” says the Jesuit Claude Binet, “and it is to talk royally to talk of the flight of birds.  Every one speaks of it, but few speak well.  Many speak so ignorantly as to excite pity among their hearers.  Sometimes one says the hand of the bird instead of saying the talon, sometimes the talon instead of the claw, sometimes the claw instead of the nail” &c.

The fourteenth century was the great epoch of falconry.  There were then so many nobles who hawked, that in the rooms of inns there were perches made under the large mantel-pieces on which to place the birds while the sportsmen were at dinner.  Histories of the period are full of characteristic anecdotes, which prove the enthusiasm which was created by hawking in those who devoted themselves to it.

[Illustration:  Fig. 154.—­“How to make Young Hawks fly.”—­Fac-simile of a Miniature in the Manuscript of “Livre du Roy Modus” (Fourteenth Century).]

Emperors and kings were as keen as others for this kind of sport.  As early as the tenth century the Emperor Henry I. had acquired the soubriquet of “the Bird-catcher,” from the fact of his giving much more attention to his birds than to his subjects.  His example was followed by one of his successors, the Emperor Henry VI., who was reckoned the first falconer of his time.  When his father, the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa (Red-beard), died in the Holy Land, in 1189, the Archdukes, Electors of the Empire, went out to meet the prince so as to proclaim him Emperor of Germany.  They found him, surrounded by dogs, horses, and birds, ready to go hunting.  “The day is fine,” he said; “allow us to put off serious affairs until to-morrow.”

Two centuries later we find at the court of France the same ardour for hawking and the same admiration for the performances of falcons.  The Constable Bertrand du Guesclin gave two hawks to King Charles VI.; and the Count de Tancarville, whilst witnessing a combat between these noble birds and a crane which had been powerful enough to keep two greyhounds at bay, exclaimed, “I would not give up the pleasure which I feel for a thousand florins!”

The court-poet, William Cretin, although he was Canon of the holy chapel of Vincennes, was as passionately fond of hawking as his good master Louis XII.  He thus describes the pleasure he felt in seeing a heron succumb to the vigorous attack of the falcons:—­

  “Qui auroit la mort aux dents,
  Il revivroit d’avour un tel passe-temps!”

  ("He who is about to die
  Would live again with such amusement.”)

[Illustration:  Fig. 155.—­Lady setting out Hawking.—­Fac-simile of a Miniature in the Manuscript of “Livre du Roy Modus” (Fourteenth.  Century).]