Edmund Bert ( - fl.1619)

Of Edmund Bert, little is known beyond what he himself has told us in his "Treatise." He lived at Collier Row, near Romford, Essex, and was somewhat advanced in years and in failing health when he was persuaded to publish the results of his experience as a falconer. Some of his recipes, it appears, he had used for sixteen or seventeen years (p. 103), and his method of hooding a shy hawk, he says, he "did privately deliver to some of my friends by word of mouth above twenty yeares since (1599), and some did carefully follow my direction, and did not faile." But it was after he had been ill for some time that he began seriously to think of publication. "By gentlemen that have come to visite and comfort me (he says) in the time of my sicknes, which hath continued with me for the most part these three yeares, I have been over-powred (desiring that my knowledge might not be buried with mee) to thrust out my labours to publike view" (p. 8).