THE fellow to this did the Earl of Southampton relate to King James.* In his Hawking Brook at Shellingford,* he saw diverse fowl upon the river, and a little way up the stream a Fox very busy by the bankside. He delayed his sport, on purpose to see what that creature would do. The Fox steps by and sheers up sometimes a scare brake,* sometimes a green weed, puts them into the water and so lets them drive down upon the Fowl; after he had well emboldened them by this stratagem, he puts many in together, and himself after them with one in his mouth; and under this covert, gaining upon the thickest part of the fowl, suddenly darts from his ambush and catches one. This did the Earl report as an eyewitness.
spelling modernised
* Henry Wriothesley (1573-1624), 3rd Earl of Southampton, whose estates were at Cowdray House in Sussex. The correct pronunciation of Wriothesley is much-disputed; however, in a letter dated November 29th, 1581, Henry’s sister Mary was referred to as ‘Lady Wresley’ (which would be pronounced ˈrezli). The Earl numbered William Shakespeare among his friends and supported him financially; in return, Shakespeare dedicated both Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece to him.
* A village some 2½ miles southeast of Faringdon, in the Vale of White Horse. It lies today in Oxfordshire, though formerly in Berkshire. A Hawking Brook is a wetland set aside for hunting waterfowl with hawks, the ‘brook hawks’ of various kinds (such as peregrines) that were trained to bring down ducks and other birds.
* As Dr Johnson’s Dictionary (1755) testified, ‘sheer’ and ‘shear’ had long been used interchangeably. The fox seems to have cut up bits of thicket (‘brake’, from Old English bracu) to frighten the birds until they became fatally complacent.