Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Henry Craik, ed. English Prose. 1916.
Vol. I. Fourteenth to Sixteenth Century

City Hunting

Thomas Dekker (c. 1570–1632)

THIS ferret hunting hath his seasons as other games have, and is followed at such a time of year, when the gentry of our kingdom, by riots, having chased themselves out of the fair revenues and large possession left to them by their ancestors, are forced to hide their heads like conies, in little caves and in unfrequented places: or else being almost windless, by running after sensual pleasures too fiercely, they are glad (for keeping themselves in breath so long as they can) to fall to ferret hunting, that is to say, to take up commodities.

No warrant can be granted for a buck in this forest, but it must pass under these five hands.

1. He that hunts up and down to find game, is called the tumbler.

2. The commodities that are taken up are called purse-nets.

3. The citizen that sells them is the ferret.

4. They that take up are the rabbit-suckers.

5. He upon whose credit these rabbit-suckers run, is called the warren.