honour in the household of his wife, assigns no reason for such a step, while it holds out a threat of everlasting enmity should Clarendon continue to oppose his will.[1]
One of his favourite amusements was fishing, and the Thames at Datchet one of his places of resort. Lord Rochester alludes to his passion for the sport in one of his minor poems,[2] and among his household expenses is an allowance to his cormorant keeper for his repairing yearly into the north parts of England "to take haggard cormorants for the King's disport in fishing."[3] His fancy for his ducks was long perpetuated in the public accounts, as Berenger observed, when a century after he was making his inquiries at the Mews for his History of Horsemanship. Struck by the constant introduction of a charge for hemp-seed, he was led at last to inquire for what purpose the seed was wanted. That none was used, was at once admitted, but the charge had been regularly made since the reign of Charles II., and that seemed sufficient reason for its continuance
- ↑ See it in Lister's Life of Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 202.
- ↑ State Poems, 8vo. 1697, p. 43. Reresby's Memoirs, 8vo. 1735, p. 100. Lord Rochester's Poems in a MS. of the time, is headed "Flatfoot, the Gudgeon Taker." (MS. in possession of R. M. Milnes, Esq., M.P., ii. 240.) "1 July, 1679. Little was done all day [at Windsor] but going a fishing. At night the Duchess of Portsmouth came. In the morning I was with the King at Mrs. Nell's."—Henry Sidney Lord Romney's Diary, i. 20.
- ↑ Audit Office Enrolments, (MSS.) vi. 326.
