In England the swan is a royal bird, and by a statute of our fourth Edward, no person other than the son of the king could have a swan-mark, or game of swans," unless he possessed a freehold of the clear yearly value of five marks, 31. 6s. 8d. of our present money. The privilege of keeping a game of swans, deductus cygnorum, or, as it more rarely runs in the old law-Latin, volatus cygnorum, is manifested by the grant of a Cygninota or swan-mark, which is a freehold of inheritance, and may be granted over. Leland in his Kuкvεlov aσμа or swan-song, shows forth the royalty of the bird and figures a Cygnea pompa, wherein a crowned swan rows his state, surrounded by nine cygnets.

There appears to be a doubt whether the swan is a bird royal in Scotland; but although the proprietors of the

"Land of the mountain and the flood"

possess the right of fowling over their own grounds, swans, it seems, unless specially granted, are reserved to the crown.

Nor was the cygninota the only privilege accorded by royalty: there was also the delegation of the prerogative right of seizing, within certain limits, all white swans not marked. In the palmy days of the Roman Catholic Church such a privilege was vested in the princely Abbot of Abbotsbury, whose district extended over the estuary formed by Portland Island and the Chesil Bank, the stern barrier to the fury of the waves rolling in from the Atlantic, and the scene of many a shipwreck. When that church tottered to its fall this royal right was granted to the ancestor of the Earl of Ilchester, in whom it is at present vested, and although somewhat shorn of its ancient extent, it is still the largest swannery of this description in the kingdom. A noble spectacle, even now, is presented there; for the swans are not crippled in the pinion, and the sight of some eighty of these splendid birds, many of them on the wing together, will not be readily forgotten by those who have witnessed it.

There was, in old times, an officer called the royal swanherd, magister deductus cygnorum, and that not with reference to the Thames alone. Persons who executed this office of "master of the king's swans" in the counties of Huntingdon, Cambridge, Northampton and Lincoln, as well as that of "supervisor and appraiser" of all swans in any mere or water in Huntingdonshire, may be traced in the parliament rolls. There was a swannery of some extent at Clarendon in Wiltshire, as an appendage to that royal palace or manor; and there was also one in the Isle of Purbeck.

Nor was the Isis unadorned, formerly, by these noble birds, for in the sixteenth century, Oxford, Isidis vadum, Saxonicè Ousford,

"Her husband

and Ousenford, boasted of a game of swans. Thame" bore and still bears upon his bosom the greatest numbers, although they are sadly reduced. The Queen and the city companies of the Dyers and Vintners are, at present, the largest swan-owners on the Thames. When numbered in 1841 there were two hundred and thirty-two belonging to the crown, one hundred and five the property of the Dyers, and one hundred of the Vintners. In the good old times the Vintners alone reckoned five hundred as their share.

But the swan-mark?

This is cut upon the upper mandible, and consists of certain figures denoting the ownership. Queen Victoria's mark-and it was that of the three last kings-is composed of five open, rather long ovals, pointed at each extremity. Two of these are placed with the ends in a longitudinal direction on each side of the “berry," and a little below it: the other three go across the bill transversely, a little lower down. Mr. Yarrell in his interesting "British Birds," figures many of these cygninotæ. Two cuts or nicks in the form of a V placed longitudinally on the bill, the open part of the letter being towards the berry, form the Vintner's mark, and from their swans with two nicks have been hatched-we speak with all due reverence for Mr. Kempe's doubts-the double necked swans whose portraits grace our signboards.

It is to review or repair these marks, and cut them upon the bills of the young birds, that the markers of the royal swans, and of those belonging to the companies above-mentioned, on the first Monday in every August go a "swan-upping," or swanhopping," according to the popular and corrupted term, when the swan-uppers" catch the swans, and take them up for inspection and notation.

"What a great trust it is," says Howel, in his Londinopolis, 'for the Lord Mayor to have the conservation of the noble river of Thames, from Stanes Bridge till she disgorgeth herself into the sea? How stately is he attended when he goes to take a view of the river, or a swan-hopping? And lately, what a noble addition was it for the Lord Mayor to have a park of deer of his own so near the city, to find him sport and furnish him with venison ? What an honour is it for the Lord Mayor to be accounted the first man of England upon the death of the sovereign prince. As when King James was invited to come and take the crown of England, Robert Lee, Lord Mayor of London, was the first man who subscribed, and then the officers of the crown, with the chief noblemen after him. The Recorder of London, also, is Primus

Consiliarius Angliæ, and is privileged to plead within the barre. The Lord Mayors of London have been called sometime to sit at the council-table, as Sir John Allen was in Henry the Eighth's time, with others (which Allen gave that rich collar of gold which the Lord Mayors use to wear) and the aldermen, his brethren, were used to be called barons."

And again :

"Now touching the magnificence, gravity, and state of the chief magistrate: neither the Pretor of Rome, nor the Prefect of Milan; neither the Proctors of St. Mark, in Venice, or their Podestas in other cities; neither the Provost of Paris, the Markgrave of Antwerp, can compare with the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs of London: if one go to the variety of their robes, sometimes scarlet, richly fur'd, sometimes purple, sometimes violet and puke. What a goodly spectacle it is to behold the Lord Mayor, and the Companies attending him in so many dainty barges, when he goes to be sworn in Westminster-Hall; and what brave shews there are attending him by land at his return? What a plentiful sumptuous dinner, consisting of so many huge tables, is provided for him? What a variety of domestick officers wait upon him perpetually, whereof, with the Remembrancer, there are five of them esquires by their places? What a comely sight it is to see the Lord Mayor, sheriffs, and aldermen, going in their robes upon festivals to the cathedral church of St. Paul's, though they who stand so well affected to the present government, say, that he goeth in now at the wrong end of the church: what a goodly sight it is when he goeth upon Easter holidayes to the Spittle, with the sword and cap of maintenance going before him? How his robes are fitted for the season, as from Michaelmas to Whitsontide, he weares violet fur'd; from Whitsontide to Michaelmas, scarlet lined; and for distinction among the aldermen, they who have bin Lord Mayors, have their cloaks lined with changeable Taffata; but those that have not, with green Taffata! What great places of trust are committed to the Lord Mayor, as the keeping of the Great Bridge in repair, which hath such large revenues belonging unto it, with a particular stately seal, which of old had the effigies of Thomas of Becket (a Londoner born) upon it, with this inscription in the name of the city

'Me quæ te peperi, ne cesses, Thoma, tueri.'

But the seal was altered in Henry the Eighth's reign."

Reverting to the legislative protection thrown round the swan, it may be asked how came the bird to be held in such high estimation by our ancestors? It is pleasant to look upon, certainly—

"beautiful exceedingly," no doubt—and there was the old prestige in its favour; but still this will hardly account for its being hedged in by penal statutes so closely, that it was only accessible by royal grant or prescription: no; the truth must be told; the cause lay deeper,-in that omnipotent assimilating agent, the stomach.

Now the possession of a stomach per se, is not distinctive— nay, the lowest Infusoria are endowed with a polygastric power, to which the most accomplished alderman has not the slightest pretension: the life of these Polygastria, indeed, is one perpetual feast. But it is the cultivated and discriminating stomach that distinguishes civilized man; and one of his first legislative cares has always been to protect his tit-bits. Nor is it matter of wonder that the "flaming minister" who laid his offerings before the gastric shrine, should have been considered, even in early times, a personage of some consequence. Accordingly we find him a character of high repute among the polite Athenians, although it must be admitted that the cook seems to have been a slave of no high grade among the stern Romans.

The Larderarius, however, of the Normans was often a clergyman, and instances are on record of his leaving the larder to assume the mitre. The Grans Queux were officers of dignity in the palaces of princes, and so it was in the golden days of the monasteries, where they were always monks, and indeed in old times there is reason for believing that the execution of the office by ecclesiastics was not confined to those establishments. In the affray at Oxford in the year 1238, between the retinue of the Pope's Legate, Cardinal Otto, and the students, the cardinal's magister coquorum and own brother lost his life. Poisoning was then rife in Europe generally, and this accounts for the appointment of persons of rank to the culinary department. Matthew Paris gives it as a reason for the tenure of the office by so near a relation of the Cardinal- Ne procuraretur

aliquid venenorum quod nimis timebat legatus." Every thing relating to diet was considered of great consequence by our ancestors, and there is extant in Leland an order for a physician to watch the young prince's wet-nurse at every meal, as inspector of her meat and drink.

Our readers may not be unwilling to learn what an Oxford row in the thirteenth century was like. A grand row it was, as may be supposed, when it had for its initiative elements an Irishman, a Welshman, and an Italian. The clerical scholars sent to the abbey where the Legate was lodged a present of viands and liquors for his use, before dinner. After dinner

they waited on him themselves for the purpose of saluting him with all honour and reverence. Unfortunately a Transalpine porter, more impudent than beseemed his station, holding the gate ajar and shouting, more Romano," cried somewhat petulantly, "what d'ye want?" The scholars replied that they wanted to see the Legate that they might salute him; for they thought, it seems, that they were to receive honour for honour. The porter, however, treating them with a most provoking haut en bas, not without abuse, flatly refused to admit them. Upon which the scholars made some such a rush as their successors made in better temper at the theatre when the hero of a hundred fights was installed, and got in pell-mell. They were met by a body of the Romans, who pummelled them with their fists, and belaboured them with sticks, not without repayment by the storming party, and when the fray was at its height, and they were abusing each other in university Latin, and choice lingua franca, plying their staves by way of accompaniment, a poor Irishman, who stood by the kitchen door, more mindful of his hungry stomach than the row, begged for a morsel of something good for God's sake. When the proud master cook heard his prayer, which he probably did not understand, he became so wrathful, what with the noise of the combat and the heat of his post, that he dipped a ladle into the boiler where the fat meats were simmering, and threw its contents into the petitioner's face.

A fiery scholar from the principality saw the indignity. Up rose his Welsh blood; he exclaimed, Proh pudor!" Anglicè 'What a shame!" and bending his bow which he had brought to aid his fellow-students, drew it with such hearty will that he sent a shaft right through the body of the chef, who fell dead. The Legate, on hearing the shout that accompanied his brother's fall, gat him up into the church-tower in his canonicals and also in a parlous fear, and there locked himself in. At nightfall, and when the tumult had somewhat subsided, he threw off his sacred vestments, mounted his best horse, forded the river not without peril, and fled to King Henry for shelter and redress, leaving the enraged scholars seeking for him with expressions that left little doubt what his fate would have been had he fallen into their hands. They paid dearly for this outbreak: the most active were brought to London, imprisoned, and most catawampously anathematized; or as Matthew Paris has it, anathemate innodati."

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But to return to our swans. From a very early date the bird has held a high place at high feasts. It graced the board at the nuptial dinner when Iphicrates married the King of Thrace's