s, rushed into these secular amusements.
Prohibitions of councils, however frequently repeated, produced little
effect. In some instances a particular monastery obtained a
dispensation. Thus that of St. Denis, in 774, represented to Charlemagne
that the flesh of hunted animals was salutary for sick monks, and that
their skins would serve to bind the books in the library.[550] Reasons
equally cogent, we may presume, could not be wanting in every other
case. As the bishops and abbots were perfectly feudal lords, and often
did not scruple to lead their vassals into the field, it was not to be
expected that they should debar themselves of an innocent pastime. It
was hardly such indeed, when practised at the expense of others.
Alexander III., by a letter to the clergy of Berkshire, dispenses with
their keeping the archdeacon in dogs and hawks during his
visitation.[551] This season gave jovial ecclesiastics an opportunity of
trying different countries. An archbishop of York, in 1321, seems to
have carried a train of two hundred persons, who were maintained at the
expense of the abbeys on his road, and to have hunted with a pack of
hounds from parish to parish.[552] The third council of Lateran, in
1180, had prohibited this amusement on such journeys, and restricted
bishops to a train of forty or fifty horses.[553]

Though hunting had ceased to be a necessary means of procuring food, it
was a very convenient resource, on which the wholesomeness and comfort,
as well as the luxury, of the table depended. Before the natural
pastures were improved, and new kinds of fodder for cattle discovered,
it was impossible to maintain the summer stock during the cold season.
Hence a portion of it was regularly slaughtered and salted for winter
provision. We may suppose that, when no alternative was offered but
these salted meats, even the leanest venison was devoured with relish.
There was somewhat more excuse therefore for the severity with which the
lords of forests and manors preserved the beasts of chace than if they
had been considered as merely objects of sport. The laws relating to
preservation of game were in every country uncommonly rigorous. They
formed in England that odious system of forest laws which distinguished
the tyranny of our Norman kings. Capital punishment for killing a stag
or wild boar was frequent, and perhaps warranted by law, until the
charter of John.[554] The French code was less severe, but even Henry
IV. enact