Medieval Hunting

by Richard Almond

  VIII. Item, Because that many Clerks and Scholars of the University of Oxford unknown . . . have hunted with Dogs and Greyhounds in divers Warrens, Parks and Forests . . . and taken Deer, Hares and Conies . . . .23

  These student-poachers kept the right kinds of dog for successful forays into other men’s preserves and were obviously prepared to take game of any variety. The quantities which they were taking must have been considerable to warrant a specific inclusion in the statute. For many, educated as nobles or gentlemen before going up to the university, hunting was part of their way of life and it is hardly surprising that they wished to continue actively to participate as students, whether legally or illegally. Doubtless, this applied also to Cambridge students.

  In his researches into the local codes of law in Iberia, John Cummins has found that the medieval townsman, as well as the villager, had rights of hunting which varied regionally and from town to town.24 This is, of course, legitimate hunting by the commons, but it surely indicates that townsmen in the Iberian Peninsula were not divorced from the countryside and still wanted or needed to hunt wild quarry. There is no reason to suppose that this need or desire should not have applied to any person in England or the continent at this time, or indeed for centuries to come.

  Dress for the medieval common man out hunting was, of necessity, strictly practical and utilitarian. Peasants and other poor folk had few, if any, changes of clothes and almost certainly they performed their labours and went hunting in the same set of garments. A recent analysis of the February miniature from the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berri, painted in about 1416 by the Limburg brothers, points out that the inhabitants of the factor’s house were not poor as several pieces of spare clothing hang on the walls. In contrast ‘the poor possessed only one set of clothes’.25 The Sumptuary Statute of 1363 specifies the dress of persons with goods and chattels below the value of 40s (£2) to be blanket cloth and russet stuff which could be bought at 12d (1s) per yard. This applied to most rural folk including ‘carters, ploughmen, cowherds, oxherds, dairymen, shepherds, other keepers of beasts and threshers of grain’.26 However, this plain rustic clothing had distinct advantages over the bright, flamboyant dress usually worn by the nobility out hunting, exemplified by the figures in the Maximilian tapestries. Simple, drab or russet clothing blended better into the landscape and probably a little dirt assisted this process. It is significant that both freedom of movement and muted, natural colours were considered important factors when dedicated noble hunters decided what to wear out hunting, and some of them wisely took their cue from the local rural peasantry. In the mid-thirteenth century, Emperor Frederick II realised the wisdom of rustic wear when out hawking and advised ‘Garments must be short . . . preferably beige or an earthen tint, and of such material as peasants wear’.27 John I of Portugal said that colour was of no importance, but that practicality mattered to some extent. He advised narrow sleeves, or leg-of-mutton sleeves which were narrow from the elbow to the wrist, that the tunic should not come below knee level, even for the mounted huntsman, and that boots were essential.28 The hunting drawings in Queen Mary’s Psalter show the lowest class of professional hunter, the hunting assistants, all wearing a plain knee-length dress, with a circular hole for the neck, and long sleeves. This simple garment is girdled round the waist and tucked up at the front for more freedom of movement.29 The peasant netting partridges is dressed in similar fashion with the addition of a small, unattached half-hood.30 Nearly two centuries later, plain natural colours for hunting clothes are recommended by Emperor Maximilian in his Private Hunting Book; he advises ‘You shall wear gray and green clothing, partly gray, partly green’.31 Maximilian loved to hunt alone, dressed as a ‘real’ hunter, but there were more formal occasions, such as when he was the honoured guest of the Elector Frederic the Wise. Naturally, Maximilian dressed in the height of courtly fashion for such politically important events, as is shown in the stag hunting painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder.

  For the lone hunter, out to fill the pot and have some rare sport, concealment and camouflage were vitally important to success. The European forest was a vast store of potential food, to be harvested using every possible advantage. Wearing green in the Greenwood, like the legendary outlaws and heroes of the peasants, Robin Hood, Little John and Gamelyn, made practical sense.32 The illustration of undoing and breaking-up the hart in the Manuscrit français 616 version of Livre de chasse shows ten hunters, but of different rank. The three nobles are dressed in bright red or pink whereas the seven hunt servants are in green hunting dress, including three with green knee-stockings.33 In fact, green was the livery colour not only of professional hunt servants but also of the employed forestry officials, the so-called Yeomen of the Forest. In the fifteenth-century Robin Hood rhymes, Robin and his Merry Men are portrayed as such yeomen who fled to live in the Greenwood wearing their occupational uniforms.34 What else did they have to wear? It is natural that they were described by the Robin Hood poets as being in green; the audience, whether gentle or common, would immediately understand, and indeed probably expect, such a point of reference in the description of yeomen foresters.

  In The Parlement of the Thre Ages, Youth is portrayed as a gentle hunter, but ‘He was gerede alle in grene’.35 and is referred to as ‘the gome alle in grene’.36 The dreamer-poet represents himself as a lawless hunter, a literate game-thief and dreamer without status.37 He carefully camouflages himself with foliage before stalking the deer ‘Both my body and my bowe I buskede with leues’,38 and then hides beside a tree (his tryst?) and waits for a hart to appear. The use of natural foliage as camouflage is vividly represented in a miniature in Livre de chasse; the hunter is stalking deer using a charnette or stalking-cart. Hunter, horse, cart and attendant groom are all camouflaged with leaves and branches.39 The point here is not the status of the hunter, but rather that Fébus was showing that camouflage was a recognised technique of concealment which enabled hunters to approach game closely in order to maximise the success of a shot. Fébus also writes of approaching game (deer) using a stalking-cow, described as ‘une toile qui semble a un buef’. However, the miniature in the Manuscrit français 616 version of Livre de chasse shows a stalking-horse in which two assistants are concealed,40 akin to the traditional English pantomime horse! Manning remarks that stalking-horses were often used by hunters of all classes to approach deer which only feared two-footed predators.41 The references in The Parlement of the Thre Ages to gentle but lawless hunters wearing green and using leaves to aid concealment indicate that these techniques were probably well known, if not universal, and employed in the field by hunters of different status but for the same reason. The use of natural materials in the art of concealment and camouflage must go back thousands of years to the earliest hunters, as must the use of dummies in approaching wild quarry. The ultimate aim of any hunter was to be as effective as possible, particularly if fresh meat was the main objective. For the rural lower orders brought up in the countryside, concealment and camouflage would have been second nature, valuable skills taught by their elders and passed on by word of mouth and practical example.

  Undoubtedly, at the appropriate time, such as when out stalking deer, nobles wore green clothing and perhaps natural camouflage; commonalty hunters did so because green was their occupational livery or because they possessed nothing else. Thus what constituted ‘correct’ dress out hunting depended upon who was hunting and for what purpose. The basic problem for the upper classes was whether to dress for status or practicality and, of course, aristocratic veneurs had this pleasant choice whereas common hunters did not. Thus, we cannot judge status purely on dress code, although it can be a significant indicator, depending upon the context of hunting which is described or illustrated. The one factor which is clear is that the aristocratic authors of the most informative late medieval hunting texts agree that green was the correct colour to wear for ‘true’ hunters. However, as John Cummins comments, there appears little consistency in the colouring of
hunting garments in medieval illustrations, although there can be some consistency within one manuscript, such as between mounted hunters and assistants on foot.42 The unknown factor is that illustrations may not always have reflected practice in the hunting field, the reason being that illuminated pictures in manuscripts had decorative and status purposes as well as a purely instructive function.

  Quarry hunted by the commonalty included virtually every living bird and animal but it all had the same factor in common – edibility. Wolves and foxes, to be killed without mercy and indiscriminately, were the exceptions.43 Vulpicide was considered as a favour to the community, not as a sin.44 Here, gentle and humble hunters’ interests collided. Nobles hunted wolves and foxes on horseback par force but these beasts were also hunted on foot by common men as they were predators and yielded a valuable pelt. A marginal picture in The Luttrell Psalter shows such a huntsman about to let slip his brace of greyhounds at Reynard.45 Bears (hunted in the wild on the continent but in England the product of bear-baiting), badgers and squirrels made good eating. Red deer, being royal game, were rigorously protected as were fallow deer and, perhaps to a lesser extent, roe deer. Hares, although the favourite quarry of English gentle veneurs, were also hunted by humble persons using different methods to the upper classes. A chapter in Roy Modus explains how to hunt the hare with running hounds, a common enough method today, while a later chapter tells of the poor man who has only a reseul, a pocket or bag net, and how he is to capture hares in the fields and vineyards.46 The Master of Game comments that ‘any poor gentleman with a couple of greyhounds or a few raches [small hounds running by scent] could have a good run with the hare, even though he might not possess a horse’.47

  Note that this hunter although presented as ‘poor’, was still a ‘gentleman’ so his real social status remains ambiguous; or does it? Perhaps Edward is conceding that there were poor hunters who pursued noble game but, naturally, they were still gentlemen. William Baillie-Grohman comments in The Master of Game that the writings of the French veneurs illustrate how rich and poor pursued the hare, if not always by the fairest methods.48 He also relates that Gace de la Buigne tells how small farmers would assemble with their hounds, some forty of different breeds and sizes, and hunt hares with great enjoyment and success.49 These French farmers were using whatever resources they had between them, to hunt the hare in a manner which was a humbler version of hare hunting by a trencher-fed pack from an aristocratic hunt establishment. Their methodology was loosely based on gentle hunting but they lacked the wherewithal and education to pursue it ‘correctly’. However, their enjoyment was probably just as intense as that of their aristocratic neighbours. François Villon in writing his will, The Testament, comments satirically on two friends, down-at-heel gentlemen, who are also difficult to classify socially:

  As for Merbeuf and Louviers,/ I leave them neither bull nor cow/ for they’re no stockmen. More truly they/ are men to carry hawks (now, now,/ don’t think this is a joke!) to bow/ and stoop on partridges and plover,/ without a failure anyhow-/ at Madam Machecoue’s and under cover.50

  Gaston Fébus gives instructions for pot-hunting but at the same time makes it clear he does not approve of such methods for the sportsman ‘Also one can take hares in divers methods with cords, for which I would that they who take hares thus should have them [the cords] round their own necks.’51

  However, as a social indicator, the evidence for the practice of netting game is mixed. Two pictures in Livre de chasse show two commonalty methods of taking hares. ‘Hare driving with bells’ is a cunning technique in which a long-net is stretched between a wood and the field where the hares are feeding. The hunters hold a rope which has bells attached to it and as they walk towards the wood across the field, the bells ring, driving the hares into the long-net. In netting ‘hares in their muses’, the nets are stretched across runs habitually taken by hares at the crossing of rural roads. Hunters with spears are hiding nearby to despatch the hares when they become entangled in the nets.52 This method of taking hares also appears in Roy Modus.53 Both these methods are simple and effective, as well as requiring a minimum of equipment, making them ideal for rustic hunters.

  Nets of various types and snares were commonly used by practical hunters to take most forms of game, birds and animals. Gaston Fébus was familiar with nets and netting both large and small game. An illustration in Livre de chasse shows the manufacture of snares, running nooses and nets from rope, together with an explanation of method entitled ‘Si devise comment on doit fere et lassier toutes manieres de las’. Other illustrations demonstrate the methods of netting deer, wild boar and wolves with large nets and rabbits with small nets.54 The lively base de page miniature for April in the Calendar of MS Egerton 1146 is of a mounted hunter with hounds chasing a stag and hind into a large net stretched between two trees.55 These illustrations show the blurring of upper- and lower-class methodology. Who netted what and when? As regards deer and other large game, the answer seems to be ‘everybody’ when the occasion demanded fresh meat, a continuing problem for all classes in the Middle Ages. As in France and England, some German manuals exhibit élitist bias on methodology. For example, the Jagd der Minne includes a contrast between the sportsmanlike hunting methods of the Minnejäger, a member of the lower nobility, and those of the Becken-jeger, the bad huntsman, who employs nets and snares during the chase.56 This latter practice was presumably used to purposely bring the hunt to an abrupt but more predictable conclusion than the open chase. However, not all contemporary evidence inclines to this view and the use of nets and snares in the German medieval chase was not always considered unsporting. Indeed, some literary passages describe both stags and hinds being netted and trapped during the chase.57

  As with wearing green, it is clear that the practice of using nets is not indicative of commonalty hunting as netting was socially widespread. This very effective method of taking all types of game from deer to rabbits was a well-established practice which continued for centuries. Roger Manning comments ‘Hunting with toils or nets was a very common practice in the Tudor period among all classes from kings to peasants.’ Even Queen Elizabeth hunted in this manner at Theobalds in the 1590s.58 Certainly, as we have seen, the nobility used large fixed nets to ensnare big game, particularly deer and wild boar, yet there is persuasive evidence that commoners probably used netting as an everyday method more than nobles. It appears scale of net was important; smaller nets were cheaper to buy or manufacture and were easily concealed and dismantled on clandestine outings. This is not to say that small-scale netting by commonalty hunters was easier, less ingenious or lacking in skill, probably the contrary. An illustration in Roy Modus shows a clever rigid-framed trap for catching squirrels. One animal is already inside the trap, greedily eating the bait, while a second descends from a nearby tree to claim his share. A worried peasant waits some distance away to pull the cord which will close the trap entrance.59 A line drawing in Queen Mary’s Psalter shows a peasant netting a small covey of partridge using a net several feet long stretched across a tapering wooden frame. Two ropes are attached to the wider end, suggesting the structure may have been thrown or, more likely, is being pulled by the hunter.60 Roy Modus shows two peasants each holding a large framed net over sitting larks while a third rings a bell to put the birds up into the nets.61 Another type of net was the cokeshote or cockshut, a large net suspended between two long poles and employed to catch, or shut in, flying woodcock.62 The device was held upright and clapped shut by the hunter when the bird flew into the netting. The woodcock’s habit of flighting out from their woodland day roosts along an identical flight path at the same time each evening to feed, made the bird an easy prey to stealthy, observant hunters skilled in woodcraft. The Percy Bailiff’s Rolls of the fifteenth century record a reference to purchasing five cokshotes for this purpose ‘Et de 1s. receptis de redditu V cokshotes sic dimissorum diuersis tenentibus per forestarium ididem.’ In this case, the cockshotes were purchased for the local Fo
rest establishment, but these simple aerial trapping structures were easily made by any skilled countryman. This ancient practice of taking woodcock is commemorated in the place-name Cockshut Wood, a small wood situated on the east shore of Derwent Water, near Keswick, in the Lake District. Cockshuts were not used at ‘roding’, the spring/summer courtship flight by dominant males at dawn and dusk.63

  The alternative to using a cockshote can be seen in a charming, though patently ludicrous, illustration in Roy Modus. The method is jokingly described by Modus as a la folletoere (a bit of nonsense) and involves the hunter dressing up as a woodcock, including a long nosepiece like a beak, approaching the bemused bird on his knees, then snaring the quarry around the neck with a horsehair noose tied to a rod.64 This was surely the ultimate in optimistic camouflage techniques!

  Such a simple but effective device as a cockshote could clearly be used for taking other medium- to small-sized birds. A variation on the cockshote is shown in a margin of The Luttrell Psalter. Here, a peasant is netting a small bird using a simple but ingenious contrivance, consisting of a long pole with a triangular net at the top attached to a moveable cross-piece. The mouth of the net can be closed by means of a draw-cord held by the hunter when a bird is caught.65 Peasant hunters also used clap-sticks to catch small birds which were lured in to mob a live owl decoy. This method is also illustrated in Roy Modus.66 The practice of using live or artificial decoys to attract prey is an ancient one, the decoy being either of the same species as the quarry or a predator type, such as an owl or hawk, likely to be attacked by the quarry. A favourite trick was to cover twigs and small branches with a thick layer of glue made from lime, and then attract small birds in to perch on the prepared twigs. Roy Modus shows a peasant hidden in a bush with a songbird attached to his wrist, the bird’s song attracting others of the same species on to the limed twigs of nearby bushes.67 John of Salisbury, writing in the third quarter of the twelfth century, mentions various peasant practices of taking wild birds, including snares, nooses and of luring them ‘by tunes or whistle’.68 Again, this latter well-known technique is illustrated in Roy Modus. The concealed peasant hunter plays his whistle to attract songbirds which fly in and mob an owl decoy attached to a nearby perch; the songbirds land then become stuck to limed branches.69 A bas de page to a picture of the ‘Mouth of Hell’ in the Hours of Catherine of Cleves shows a man using caged songbirds to catch birds. Attracted by the live decoys’ song, wild birds fly in to perch on a limed string stretched between a tree and a stake.70