Medieval Hunting

by Richard Almond

  Red deer hind: September 14th. to January 6th. or February 2nd.

  Fallow deer buck: June 24th. to September 14th.

  Fallow deer doe: September 14th. to February 2nd.

  Roe deer buck: Easter to September 29th.

  Roe doe: September 29th. to February 2nd.

  Hare: September 29th. to February 2nd. or June 24th., but Twiti, Gaston Fébus and Edward, Duke of York, like hare hunting as it ‘lasteth all the year’.

  Wild boar: September 14th., 29th. or Christmas Day to February 2nd.

  Wolf: Christmas to March 25th. but probably all year.

  Fox: September 8th. or Christmas Day to March 25th.

  Otter: February 22nd. to June 24th.

  Martin, badger and rabbit were hunted at all seasons.120

  Hunting seasons and non-hunting seasons were not legislated under statute law at this time, although the Forest Laws did specify hunting seasons for most animals. This sort of control by the ruling élites over their own pastime must also have been the result of two factors which were very different to the practical aspect of ‘grease time’: respect for their quarry and conservation of the species.

  This ‘respect’ for the ‘dignity’ of the hunted beast, which is eventually to be killed, is one of the continuing ambiguities of hunting throughout the ages. The medieval hunter perceived and classified certain animals as ‘noble’, and so applied human rules of chivalry to those favoured beasts. This sportsmanlike regard was essentially one of honour and ‘fairness’ by one gentleman to another of equal status, somewhat akin to the Plains Indians’ respect for the American bison, but also, in our case, involving notions of rank and status. The aristocratic hunter was very definitely identifying himself and other sportsmen of his class with the accepted ‘beasts of venery’, an aristocratic form of anthropomorphism, more profound than simple humane respect for the quarry. In the English language, we are familiar with the term ‘sportsman’, which is used in a complimentary way. The equivalent term in the medieval Middle German manuals is Weidmann,121 indicating an attitude of decent consideration for the quarry and other hunters, and of general good behaviour in the hunting field.

  The preservation of stocks and the continuity of species for future hunting must also have played a significant part in assigning a fence month to high status species. The medieval aristocratic hunter was an educated and well-versed man and he undoubtedly realised that the supply of large game was not endless. Imparking of unenclosed land and the rearing of deer and wild boar to stock such parks were understandable reactions to the decline in numbers of large quarry species. The idea of conservation in the later Middle Ages was thus complex and to a large extent based upon completely different philosophies from the fundamentally humane ideas of modern hunters and legislators.

  Remarkably, the fence month is actually illustrated in one high-quality German manuscript, the Calendar pictures of which form a cycle dedicated to aristocratic hunting. The bas de page miniature for May of MS Egerton 1146 shows a peaceful pastoral scene of stags, hinds and calves grazing in a wood beside a stream.122 Significantly, this is the only miniature of the Calendar in which hunters are absent. The occurrence of such an illustration in this manuscript surely reflects not only the occupational accuracy of the whole hunting cycle but also the forbearance and sportsmanship of the patron, two essentially chivalric ideals of aristocratic medieval hunters which separate them from their peasant counterparts. Of course, gentle hunters could afford to indulge themselves in these idealistic and generous ways whereas peasants could not, particularly if they were poaching venison. The snares, traps and other ‘engines’ used by peasant deer poachers in royal Forests demonstrate skilful efficiency but also unspeakable cruelty, the object being to incapacitate the deer, not grant an honourable and quick death after a long chase.123

  In conclusion, although quarry type was a vital element in defining the aristocratic medieval chase, methodology, seasons, lexis, ritual and procedure were perhaps more important indicators of an élitist pastime, a ‘sport apart’. After all, anybody could poach a deer or hare, but this did not make a man a gentle hunter or indicate social status, in fact very often the exact opposite, although many poachers were aristocratic or ecclesiastic in origin. It was only a minority of the population who could afford to hunt on horseback and equip themselves adequately and also be members of that properly educated élite, regarded as ‘lerned’ by both peer and socially inferior groups. Their premier pastime and sport had to be, and be seen clearly to be, remote from the commonalty and unattainable by any but those of noble, or at least gentle, birth. This was an important part of the public face of the European ruling classes.

  FOUR

  Everyman

  As the previous chapters have demonstrated, there is a wealth of evidence in hunting manuals, treatises and imaginative and romantic literature on the European upper classes hunting and hawking. All of this contemporary literature was written by gentle authors for a gentle, or courtly, educated audience. Inevitably, the immediate impression given by this great and varied mass of material is of the almost total exclusion of the rest of medieval society, who did not possess the privilege of leisure. The Third Estate, or commons, had to work for a living. The great majority of people of this rank dirtied their hands pursuing an occupation. Whatever their status or wealth within this feudal category, they could not claim the title of ‘gentleman’. However, in spite of the humble status of common hunters, a few textual sources, notably some canonical French manuscripts, indicate that hunting was a widespread activity throughout the community. The Livre de chasse and Roy Modus include descriptions and instructions catering for the needs of the general rural population, in addition to those for the courtier and aristocratic landowner.1 Roy Modus is indeed invaluable on peasant methods of taking birds. His manual of instruction is presented in the well-established form of a dialogue made up of question and answer, and includes chapters in which King Modus responds to a poor man’s questions on methods of taking birds. The text is clarified with illustrations. Livre de chasse is also a precious source of commonalty methods but is confined to hunting mammals, lacking any instruction on taking birds, or on hawking. The MS fr. 616 and MS M.1044 manuscripts of Livre de chasse contain particularly good quality and useful illustrations of commonalty methods.

  Movable type, first successfully used by Johann Gutenberg at Mainz from around 1454/5, expanded and accelerated the production of aristocratic hunting and hawking books. However, it is significant that there were no specific texts for the instruction of common hunters for nearly two centuries. Probably the first such text was German, Johann Conrad Aitinger’s Brief and simple report on bird-catching with snares, written in 1631. Snaring birds was the most popular form of hunting for the mass of society. The fact that a book on commonalty methods was in print and available to a more literate public reflects changes in attitudes and the general unrest in Germanic society at this time.2

  Texts other than hunting books can prove useful for providing additional pieces of information on commonalty hunting. The Luttrell Psalter, a beautiful illuminated manuscript created as a status symbol for Sir Geoffrey Luttrell somewhere between 1320 and 1340,3 shows some few pictures of peasant methodology as well as the expected aristocratic hunting and hawking illustrations. Janet Backhouse comments ‘It is however abundantly clear from the flavour of the original work that the craftsmen engaged to produce this splendid and expensive manuscript had been given very specific guidance about at least some of its desired contents.’4 This manuscript is a unique record of everyday life on the Luttrell estate at Irnham in Lincolnshire in the early fourteenth century. As such, it is interesting that the patron, Sir Geoffrey Luttrell, very probably instructed the artists that illustrations of peasant hunting as well as gentle hunting were to be included, thus giving a rounded picture of estate life.

  The humble hunter and villager, as far as is known, neither wrote nor read hunting treatises, so presumably relied upon oral
tradition for instruction from family and friends on hunting methodology and techniques, as well as for advice on poaching. Using Forest court evidence on peasant deer poaching, Jean Birrell comments ‘Fathers passed on their skills to their sons, and . . . fathers, sons and brothers often hunted together’. In peasant communities, those who were related would not only know each other well but would also feel able to trust each other on illegal hunting forays.5 Thus both lone hunting and small-group hunting were widely practised by English and European peasant hunters. According to Nicholas Orme ‘Ordinary children were unlikely to take part in hunting itself, but it is hard to believe that some did not follow to hold open gates or simply to watch what went on.’6 Orme is clearly referring to aristocratic hunting and the mounted chase. However, the sons of commoners did undoubtedly hunt, not only in their own traditional ways, including poaching, but also in a formal manner if they became employed in the king’s or a great lord’s hunt establishment.

  What little information we possess on the practices of the commonalty from hunting manuals and treatises is often socially biased, even if presented accurately in the texts. Hunting books are peppered with remarks indicating distaste and disapproval. Thus, the Duke of York, writing on snaring hares with cords, comments disparagingly ‘Trewly I trowe that a good hunter wold sle hem so for no good.’7 Gaston Fébus remarks with repulsion on French peasants using a spring-trap, loaded with a hunting spear, against bears and other beasts ‘Plus n’en vueill parler de ce, quar c’est vilaine chasce.’8 It is undoubtedly significant that Fébus purposely uses the word ‘vilaine’ at this point in his text. His adverse comments on the method of driving deer into fixed nets, a practice commonly used by rich and professional hunters (legitimately) and poor hunters (illegally) to obtain supplies of venison, also show his contempt for unsporting ‘villainous’ techniques.9

  However, one of the fascinations for historians studying Livre de chasse is the considerable inclusion of commonalty methods of taking game. Why did this Prince of the Pyrenees include such lower-class material in a how-to-do-it book for nobles? The answer may be that Fébus, a wise and intelligent man, included these non-sporting techniques for the instruction of ‘all men who hunt in all ways’, which is legitimate enough in a comprehensive book on how to hunt. There is, in addition, a probable subtext to the inclusion of such material; it is so that a gentleman might be conversant with all the techniques of taking birds and animals, including those covert methods of the commons. This knowledge could prove invaluable not only in his dealings with his tenants and the rural peasantry but usefully in outwitting poachers, whatever their background.

  This possibility, that gentle readers could benefit from knowing what the lower orders might do in this respect, raises the interesting question of the role of hunting manuals and whether ‘instruction’ encompassed a wider remit than simply quarry, method and correct lexis. Perhaps feudal ‘man-management’ was a recognised part of their purpose. This seems an eminently sensible concept and in line with the philosophy of the times; there were instruction books on many subjects including hunting, hawking, heraldry, fishing, and how to bring up boys and girls from birth to puberty.10 In a society that was largely rural, instruction on the proper management of labour, in all its many aspects, appears de rigueur. A vital point is that Fébus, and some other nobles, recognised that men of few or no means, with no apparent rights of warren, were hunting by their own methods in order to obtain food and raw materials, and to protect their lives and property. No doubt, the pleasure of hunting was an additional factor and motive also, with John Cummins commenting on ‘the less fortunate men finding valid fulfilment creeping along hedges with a bundle of rabbit-nets, sitting inside a bush luring small birds, and making traps’.11

  The right to hunt and to do so freely was one of the demands made by the peasants in the 1381 revolt. Wat Tyler demanded of the youthful Richard II ‘All warrens, as well in fisheries as in parks and woods, should be commen to all; so that throughout the realm, in the waters, ponds, fisheries, woods and forests, poor as well as rich might take the venison and hunt the hare in the fields.’12 To symbolise their claim to take game in the abbot’s chases, the rebels at St Albans carried a rabbit tied to a lance.13 These demands for commonalty rights to hunt and fish freely were echoed in later European revolts and were among the first to be made by German peasants during the Peasants’ War of 1524/5.14

  That hunting by the English commons was widespread, posing a threat to the established privileges of their social superiors and also to law, order and stability is evident in a petition to Parliament in 1390, which was added to by Richard II and passed as a Statute of the Realm. This is the first of the Game Laws whose justice was administered by Common Law courts and not by the eyres of the Forest courts. It is thus a landmark in the laws concerning taking game and reflects changing attitudes in society:

  Also pray the Commons that whereas artificers and labourers, this is to say, butchers, shoemakers, tailors, and other low persons, keep greyhounds and other dogs, and at times when good Christians on holy days are at church, hearing divine services, go hunting in parks, rabbit-runs, and warrens of lords and others, and destroy them entirely; and so they assemble at such times to hold discussions, and make plots and conspiracies, to make in-surrections and disobedience to your majesty and laws, under colour of such manner of hunting.

  May it please you to ordain in this present parliament, that any kind of artificer or labourer or any other who lacks lands and tenements to the value of 40s a year, or any priest or clerk if he has not preferment worth £10, shall not keep any greyhound, or any other dogs, if they are not fastened up or leashed, or have had their claws cut, on pain of imprisonment for a year. And that every justice of the peace shall have power to enquire and punish every contravention.15

  Richard II, having been instructed in venery from an early age like all royal princes,16 may himself have had sufficient knowledge of lower-class hunting methods to add ‘hounds, ferrets, hays, nets, hair-pipes, cords and all other devices to take or destroy beasts of the forest, hares or rabbits or other sport of gentlefolk’.17

  The king certainly meant to cover all eventualities of commonalty practice and restrict hunting of any description to those with some property, presumably those more likely to be supporters of the monarchy and the status quo. However, the basic property qualification of 40s a year indicates the lowest level of lesser gentry, perhaps even the upper yeomanry, so the law was to some extent inclusive and certainly was not an effective attempt to restrict hunting to the rich and noble members of society. The preamble to this statute expresses an important concern on the part of the authorities that commoners were holding meetings, ostensibly to hunt but in reality to plot and conspire insurrection against the king and the laws of the land. As Professor A.J. Pollard remarks dryly ‘as probably they were, since the rights to game were a highly contentious issue’.18 Significantly, this new Game Law applied to the whole kingdom but not to the royal or seigneurial Forests where Forest Law still applied. It was thus very definitely a restrictive piece of legislation, designed to legally exclude the great mass of the English population from hunting. The 1390 Game Law abolished the ancient right of all to take game from the common fields and woods of England, thus paving the way for hunting to cease being the contended monopoly of the Crown and become the privilege of the upper classes.19

  Setting aside Marxist notions of class persecution and of Ricardian political motivations, the significance of the statute to historians is obvious – it indicates that an increasing number of commoners were participating in hunting to a considerable extent and, moreover, using their own effective methods to take quarry which was regarded as ‘noble’, particularly the hare. These common folk were apparently getting above their station and had to be firmly reminded of their proper place in society. The Sumptuary Laws of Edward III, enacted in 1363, and of Edward IV, enacted in 1463,20 were another expression of the governing classes’ unease at an increa
singly socially mobile commonalty. It is significant that these laws regulating dress and public status largely affected, and were principally aimed at, the emergent ‘up-start’ middling sort or mediocres, that is, the yeomen of the countryside and the merchants, artisans and shopkeepers in the expanding towns. These yeomen were less than gentlemen: they worked.21 On the other hand, the Sumptuary Laws can be interpreted quite differently: as a pragmatic move on the part of the rulers of late medieval society to accommodate the new middle classes. Maurice Keen describes this as ‘a more determined and careful effort to bring merchants, substantial artificers and townsmen into equation with landed people, in terms of dress and degree’. This attempt to create a parity made up of different social groups indicates the increasing importance of commerce and the esteem in which it was held by those in power.22

  From the meagre evidence available it is difficult to assess whether hunting by the commons was largely restricted to the rural population or whether and to what extent townspeople were also involved. There are great problems in defining what was a town or urban, and what was rural. Where did towns begin and end? Most were small and did not possess walls to separate town from country. In any case, an enclosing wall was not a particularly valid physical division between the two areas as commercial premises and housing developed beyond most town walls, medieval York being a good example. Another problem is which residents could be classified as townsmen. Most residents probably lived and worked within their town but some people lived in a town but worked in the nearby countryside. However, common sense dictates that a good number of town residents must have regularly forayed into the countryside, and indeed the 1390 statute specifies five occupations (butchers, shoemakers, tailors, priests and clerk) which could indicate urban origins for at least some of these troublesome hunters. To people living in most towns, the potential hunting grounds in field, woodland and the king’s Forest were near at hand and easily accessible. A statute of Henry V enacted in 1421, relating to university discipline, makes it clear that some residents of Oxford were hunting, although illegally: