The writ proceeds to command the deputy to take order for the delivery of the said hawks and grey-hounds unto such persons as the said marquis and his son and the longer liver of them shall yearly, with their letter, address unto him for that purpose: And that our Treasurer for the time being shall, out of such treasure as shall from time to time come to your hands, content and pay the charges of buying the said hawks and greyhounds, &c. Given under our Signet att our Palais of Westminster, the 19th Dec. the 36th year of our Raigne (A.D. 1545). In the council book of Edward VI. and Phillip and Mary, there are further applications of the marquis for his yearly demand of hawks and grey-hounds out of Ireland, but war breaking out between Spain and England in queen Elizabeth's reign, would, of course put a stop to all intercourse, and there is no notice of any further demand. The office of grand falconer, which in England is a high hereditary office and enjoyed at this day by the duke of St. Alban's, seems never to have had any regular continuance in Ireland. In the reign of king Henry IV. Sir Hugh Shirley was created by writ of privy seal dated at Westminster, 27th March, A.D. 1400, master of the falcons in Ireland for the term of his life, to be executed by himself or his sufficient deputy, receiving from the king the accustomed fee. But from the absence of any other notice of the office, and from the tenor of the grant of the like office made in the reign of James I., it may be inferred that the office and its duties were almost unknown in Ireland. In 1605, king James I. appointed Sir Jeffrey Fenton, then principal secretary for Ireland, to be master of the hawks and game of all sorts within that realm. It is stated in the patent that many honours and estates are held of the king by the service of rendering of a falcon, eagle, gentle, goshawk, or tarsel of goshawk or other kind of hawk, and that lords or chieftains of territories had paid unto the king or his ancestors at the receipt of their exchequer, or unto the deputy or other governor-general of the kingdom, sundry hawks of the kinds aforesaid, of which hawks the king was for the most part defrauded through the negligence of his officers who ought to receive or demand the same. And that abuses were daily committed by engrossing of hawks of all sorts, by buying and selling of them and making common merchandize of them, and at times transporting them out of the kingdom to the disfurnishing of it, whereby the honourable personages in the realm and others attending the state are utterly disappointed of hawks and deprived of their recreation. For reformation of these enormities" Sir Jeffrey is appointed to be receiver of rent hawks due to the king and his successors, and master of the hawks and game. 66 In illustration of this species of render for estates and honors it may be mentioned, that in the 8th year of Edward IV. (A.D. 1468), 1 Stemmata Shirleiana; or, the Annals by Nichols, Westminster, 1841, 4to. of the Shirley Family :-Privately printed 2 Liber Munerum Hiberniæ, part ii. p. 91. Robert Bold, Esq., was by patent created baron of Ratowth with the manor thereof, to hold to him and his heirs male, rendering yearly a gos-hawk for all service, &c. And in the year 1218, Reginald Talbot was found seized of Dalkey rendering therefor a goshawk annually and in 1369 his successor, Reginald Talbot, was sued in the court of exchequer for delivering therein as the rent of Dalkey one gos-hawk, which on inspection and examination there, proved unsound and of no value, and for this fraud he was fined.2 : The following entry from the records of the court of exchequer at a somewhat later period shows that even in the reign of king James I. hawks were of importance enough to give rise to law-suits. The entry is from the rule books of the equity side of the court of exchequer. Veneris xxi° Aprillis, 1608. Limerick-In the cause dependinge betweene the Lord Bourke and George Courtney plts and Richard Gill, deft, for an ariere of haukes whereas by bill of complaint the last assizes holden at Limericke before the Earle of Thomond, Sir Humfrey Winche, knight, Lo. Chiefe Barrone of this Excheq and Henry Gosnell esquire and others on the xvith daie of August last past, It was ordered by the assent of both parties that the Goushawke menc'oned in the said Bill of Complainte shall remaine still in the possession of the defend', and that the Caste of Tasseils should be put in deposito into the handes of the right honble the Earle of Thomond, the said Earle having undertaken to restore to him to whome of right they shall be found by lawe to belonge, and the plts to commence their suite the next Tearme in the Court of Excheq' against the said deft Gill for the title of the lands.3 But the sport of hawking was now declining; and the growing use of fowling-pieces and the rapid progress of the puritan spirit in this and the succeeding reign, probably put an end to falconry. The last person who seems to have attempted the sport in Ireland was lord Strafforde; but from the ridicule he casts on the failure of his efforts, it is plain that the sport had already ceased to be a common pastime. In fact, the sport seems to have been as strange to the public, and not so successful, as the displays occasionally made in the Phoenix Park and on the Curragh of Kildare, some ten or fifteen years ago. His correspondent, lord Cottington, seems to have detailed to him some very bad sport he had had in Wiltshire for lack of wood-pigeons ; and this draws forth from lord Strafforde one of those characteristic sallies in the gailliard or courtly tone with which his correspondence abounds, indicative of his haughty and self-complacent spirit. His letter is from Dublin, and bears date the 24th November, 1633:— "Your Defeat of your Hawking sport in Wiltshire is nothing like to mine: For (as the Man you wot of said by the Pidgeons) here hath not been a Partridge in the Memory of Man, so as having a passing high-flying Tarsell, I am even setting him down, and To-morrow purpose with a cast or two of Spar-hawks to betake myself to fly at Black-Birds, ever and anon taking them on the Pate with a Trunk. 1 Lynch's Feudal Dignities, p. 182. 2 D'Alton's History of the County of Dublin, p. 888. 3 For these extracts from the exchequer records the writer is indebted to his friend, James Frederick Ferguson, Esq., the keeper of those important muniments of the national history. It is excellent Sport, there being sometimes two hundred Horse in the Field looking upon us, where the Lord of Fonsail drops out of Doors with a poor Falconer or two, and if Sir Robert Wind and Gabriel Epsley be gotten along it is a Regale."2 To conclude, the following doggerel lines describing the hawks found in Ireland, are extracted from a very curious work by John Derrick, a servant of Sir Henry Sidney, giving an account of Ireland in the year 1578 in metre of the same doggerel character extending to over a thousand verses. His main object is to describe the habits of the kerne of Ulster, whose life he had observed during Sir Henry Sidney's war with O'Neill. It will be found in the first volume of the Somers' "Collection of Tracts." But first, one word about the gos-hawk, for which Ireland was chiefly celebrated. Falconers divided hawks into two classes the long-winged and short-winged hawks. To the former belonged the falcon, and the falcon-gentle and others; to the latter the gos-hawk, which was the largest hawk used in falconry, except the ger-falcon, peculiarly the bird of kings and princes, and scarcely known in these countries. The falcon and the gos-hawk differed in their flight; the gos-hawk flew at the same level as its prey and struck at it by a side flight; the falcon mounted up above it and shot down perpendicularly, bringing down the prey with an extraordinary force to the ground, just as described in the scene at Pembroke before Henry II. The tassel, or tarsel, was simply the male of any hawk, so called from the French word tiercelet, derived from tiers, signifying third part, because (unlike the rest of creation) the males among hawks are less in size than the females, to the extent of a third part. Juliet's application of this term to Romeo is familiar to all— O for a falconer's voice, To lure this tassel-gentle back again! The following are the lines from Derrick : Of Hawkes which retain sundry names, The country store doth breed ; Whose names if patience will abide, The Goshawk, first of all the crew, The Tarsell then ensueth on, Good reason 'tis that he The Tarsell-gentle's3 course is next, Neighbours, apparently, of lord Strafforde in Yorkshire. 2 Earl of Strafforde to lord Cottington: -Strafforde's Letters, vol. i. p. 162. The prettie Marlion' is the fifth, These are the hawks which chiefly breed In fertile Irish ground; Whose match for flight and speedie wing, KILKENNY TRADESMEN'S TOKENS. BY AQUILLA SMITH, ESQ., M.D., M.R.I.A. THE subjoined list is forwarded in the hope of aiding the local archæologists in making further inquiries on the subject. The legend on the obverse is first given, with the bearing in the field between parentheses; then the legend and the bearing in the field of the reverse:--- 1. EDWARD. ROTH. MARCHANT. (A stag trippant in front of a tree, the armorial bearing of Roth). IN. KILKENNY. 1663. (E. R. 1d.). 2. IOHN. BEAVOR. (the figure of a beaver). 3. RICHARD. INWOOD. (a wind-mill). [...] KILLKENY. (Id.). 4. RALPH. SKANLAN. (Id.). KILLKENY. 1656. (a swan). 5. IOHN. WHITTLE. IN. (arms of the Commonwealth of England). KILKENY. 1656. (1d.). Engraved in Willis' "Price Current" for 1853, p. 11. 6. LVCAS. WALE. OF. (a shield containing the arms of Wale). KILKENY. MERCHANT. (L.I.W. 1d.). 7. PETER. GOODIN. OF. (1d.). KILKENY. MARCHANT. (a fleur-de-lis). 8. THOMAS. DAVIS. KILKENY. (a lion's head). EXCISE. OFFIS. (ld.). 9. WILLIAM. KEOVGH. (ld.). KILKENY. GOLDSMITH. (a mermaid). but much better, than the peregrine falcon. See Cotgrave's French and English Dictionary. A.D. 1610. Or merlin; a small sprightly hawk, called in French" es merillon," from which we have the proverb, "as merry as a marlin;" in French-"joyeux comme un es merillon.-Ib. 2 The tarsel, or male of the sparrowhawk.-Ib. 10. JOHN. LANGTON. IN. (a shield charged with three chevronels, the bearing of Langton). KILKENNY. MAR. (ld.). 11. EDWARD. SEWELL. OF. (a man dipping candles). 12. THOMAS. ADAMS. (C. K. 1658). KILKENNY. PENY. (the city arms). 13. THOMAS. ADAMS. (C.K. 1658). KILKENNY. HAPENY. (the city arms). 14. IAMES. PVRCELL. (a shield charged with three boars' heads couped, a crescent for difference-the bearing of Purcell). IRISHTOWNE. KILLNY. (I.P. 1d.). 15. IоиN. BOLTON. KILKENNY. This is given on the authority of a collector. I have not seen a specimen. 16. THOMAS. NEVELL. OF. (1d. 1658). KILKENY. 1658. (a harp). 17. THOMAS. TALBOT. OF. (ld.). KILLKENY. VINTNER. (a sun). 18. THOMAS. TOOLE. OF. (a lion rampant). KILKENY. MARCH. (1d.). 19. FOR. THE. POORE. (C.K. 1659). KILKENNY. PENY. (the city arms). 20. FOR. YE VSE. & CONVENIENCIE. (the city arms). OF. THE. INHABITANTS. (. 16. KILKENY HAPENNY. 77.). This is engraved in Snelling's second additional plate to Simon, figure 4, the date being incorrect. 21. ADAM. DVLAN. 1578 (a cross, the points floree of fleurs-delis, between the arms a crown and fleur-de-lis alternately). OF KILKENE. (a shield, surmounted by a crown, bearing three fleurs-de-lis). The advantages which result from the publication of special catalogues or lists of coins are so manifest, it is much to be regretted that the practice is not more generally adopted. The publication of such lists as I have alluded to, stimulates collectors to direct their attention more particularly to the subject, which necessarily leads to classification, and thereby furnishes the local historian with means to draw inferences from subjects, which if not grouped together might escape his attention. The first notice I find of tradesmen's tokens having been current in Ireland, is by Walter Harris, in his edition of "Ware's Antiquities of Ireland;" he informs us that, "when Oliver Cromwell possessed himself of the Government, several Merchants in Dublin, and other Towns, to supply a scarcity of small Change, coined Pence and Halfpence in Copper and Brass, with their Names and Places of Abode |