They applied to the authorities to protect their rights, urging that the approaches to their shops, the rents of which they paid regularly, were continually obstructed by a crowd of purchasers and dealers in birds.  The case was brought several times before parliament, which only confirmed the orders of the kings of France and the ancient privileges of the bird-catchers.  At the end of the sixteenth century the quarrel became so bitter that the goldsmiths and changers took to “throwing down the cages and birds and trampling them under foot,” and even assaulted and openly ill-treated the poor bird-dealers.  But a degree of parliament again justified the sale of birds on the Pont an Change, by condemning the ring-leader,

[Illustration:  Fig. 163.—­Pheasant Fowling.—­“Showing how to catch Pheasants.”—­Fac-simile of a Miniature in the Manuscript of the “Livre du Roy Modus” (Fourteenth Century).]

Pierre Filacier, the master goldsmith who had commenced the proceedings against the bird-catchers, to pay a double fine, namely, twenty crowns to the plaintiffs and ten to the King.

[Illustration:  Fig. 164.—­The Mode of catching a Woodcock.—­Fac-simile of a Miniature in the Manuscript of the “Livre du Roy Modus” (Fourteenth Century).]

It is satisfactory to observe that at that period measures were taken to preserve nests and to prevent bird-fowling from the 15th of March to the 15th of August.  Besides this, it was necessary to have an express permission from the King himself to give persons the right of catching birds on the King’s domains.  Before any one could sell birds it was required for him to have been received as a master bird-catcher.  The recognised bird-catchers, therefore, had no opponents except dealers from other countries, who brought canary-birds, parrots, and other foreign specimens into Paris.  These dealers were, however, obliged to conform to strict rules.  They were required on their arrival to exhibit their birds from ten to twelve o’clock on the marble stone in the palace yard on the days when parliament sat, in order that the masters and governors of the King’s aviary, and, after them, the presidents and councillors, might have the first choice before other people of anything they wished to buy.  They were, besides, bound to part the male and female birds in separate cages with tickets on them, so that purchasers might not be deceived; and, in case of dispute on this point, some sworn inspectors were appointed as arbitrators.

No doubt, emboldened by the victory which they had achieved over the goldsmiths of the Pont an Change, the bird-dealers of Paris attempted to forbid any bourgeois of the town from breeding canaries or any sort of cage birds.  The bourgeois resented this, and brought their case before the Marshals of France.  They urged that it was easy for them to breed canaries, and it was also a pleasure for their wives and daughters to teach them, whereas those bought on the Pont an Change were old and difficult to educate.  This appeal was favourably received, and an order from the tribunal of the Marshals of France permitted the bourgeois to breed canaries, but it forbade the sale of them, which it was considered would interfere with the trade of the master-fowlers of the town, faubourgs, and suburbs of Paris.