Medieval Hunting

by Richard Almond

  It must have been realised that enthusiastic cooperation and complete understanding between gentle and professional hunters in the hunting field were essential to success, and social events such as drinking and feasting were natural ways of encouraging them. Of course, the manuals of instruction present a perfect world and, in practice, it is likely that rank and position were rarely forgotten, merely set aside as necessity dictated. However, in a society where to be alone was probably an infrequent occurrence, men were inevitably closer to each other physically and spiritually than they are today. Differences in rank and station may or may not have been accepted with grace but they were part of what appeared to be an unchanging world which had endured since time out of mind. Camaraderie, respect and even friendship between persons of disparate status were possible in such an enclosed world, particularly one where there was the strong unifying factor of hunting.

  It is interesting that extravagant feasts also took place after falconry expeditions, as well as after hunting days. Picnic at the Court of Burgundy, a copy of a lost Flemish original by the School of Jan van Eyck, captures such an event outside the Château of Versailles. This feast took place on the eve of Philip the Good’s marriage to Duchess Isabella of Portugal in 1430.31 However, unlike the inclusive suppers which relaxed social mores and brought together gentle and professional hunters for good fellowship, this is evidently an exclusive celebration feast for royal and noble guests. There appears no equivalent social event or supper for gentle and professional falconers, so was the democratic ‘good fellowship’ of the hunting fraternity absent in hawking? It appears so; another factor supporting the widely held belief that this sport was more socially exclusive than hunting.

  However, as well as the élitist nature of hawking, there is another factor to consider here. A large hunt establishment required considerable numbers of employees to function properly, ranging from kennel varlets to master huntsmen. The large number of hunt servants necessary is not only indicated in the surviving records, such as the Royal Hunt Wages Account of Henry IV of 1470; servants also outnumber the gentle hunters in many illustrations of royal and noble hunting. In contrast, with the exception of some royal mews on the continent such as those of Emperor Frederick II and some Iberian monarchs, many aristocrats ‘made do’ with a single-handed falconer,32 a professional with the skills to care for the needs of a few hunting birds and run a small mews establishment. Pictures of hawking rarely show more than two assistants accompanying nobles, often only one, such as the lone falconer on foot accompanying the mounted lords and ladies in the August miniature of the Très Riches Heures.33 However, such illustrations may not reflect reality; with such a high-status pastime why should numbers of servants detract from the splendidly attired nobles and their ladies? The grooms and kennel men were not specialist mews employees, unlike the falconers or austringers, so cannot be included among those specifically employed in the mews. Thus there was not the social mix of people from different backgrounds in hawking, and it therefore follows that there could not be the same jolly good fellowship and inclusive feasting that were associated with hunting establishments.

  The hierarchical structure of a large hunt establishment enabled those with ambition and ability to progress up through the various stages of page, varlet, assistant huntsman and huntsman, perhaps eventually reaching the ultimate post of Maistre Venuer et Maistre des Eaues et des Forests.34 This particular late medieval job description set down the areas of responsibility of a Maistre Venuer and clearly indicates the close ties between hunt and Forest establishments. Were Masters of Game, de facto, accountable for the successful administration of both organisations? This appears a likely arrangement, at least in some Forests, solving the issues of liaison and administration by a single appointment. The repetition of skills and knowledge required makes such appointments seem inevitable to modern business total quality management. The fortunate few who reached the highest ranks appear to have had the added possibility of ennoblement for their services, particularly in France. Certainly, these high achievers in their chosen profession attained great status and, in addition, enjoyed the respect of their social superiors.

  Poaching is illegal hunting and it is the grey area of hunting as regards attempting to define social parameters in the later Middle Ages. Folk memory, reinforced by populist literature, folksongs, cinema and the media, has created an enduring, simplistic image: peasants poached because they were hungry and oppressed; lords hunted on horseback and repressed honest peasants. Indeed, the themes of the contemporary outlaw ballads always seem to include the taking of the king’s deer, and these perennial themes accord well with the established historical attitude of popular discontent,35 particularly that of the peasants and the rest of the commons. To the outlaws in the rhymes of Robin Hood and Gamelyn, the Greenwood was their home, its beasts their food.36

  Deer were obvious targets for peasant poachers. It has been said that Englishmen below the rank of gentleman were not much interested in poaching deer and would much rather take wildfowl, hares, rabbits and fish.37 This is probably true in part; the risks and penalties for poaching venison could be severe, so a considerable degree of courage was necessary to take a deer. However, the records of the Forest courts indicate that peasants were often prosecuted for poaching venison. In addition to those indicted are the unknown numbers of peasant poachers who escaped apprehension, so the real figure is likely to be very high. Deer had two great attractions for peasant poachers. Firstly, a red or fallow deer carcass of either sex furnished a large amount of meat which would keep a family in much-needed protein for many meals. Even a roe deer, buck or doe, produced a respectable poundage of tender meat. The carcass could be quickly broken up on the spot, or perhaps later in a concealed place, then covertly transported to the poacher’s house. Perhaps it was secretly sold, peasants ignoring the unwritten taboo of the gentry and aristocracy on selling venison.38 The trade in venison, with a considerable cash return, was an obvious incentive to peasant deer poaching. Secondly, the nature of deer meat had advantages to poachers. Venison can be eaten fresh if necessary, and doubtless it often was, providing a hearty meal and also getting rid of the evidence, but it can be tough and rather tasteless. Venison is game; hanging tenderises the flesh and the slow controlled breakdown of the muscle fibres produces the characteristic ‘gamy’ taste. A carcass hangs well for ten to fourteen days or more, the speed of decline thereafter depending upon the air temperature and location of hanging. It can also be smoked or salted and remains edible for months. The food return on a single poaching expedition was thus high and must often have been considered well worth the risks involved. In a study which is based upon the records of the Forest courts of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Jean Birrell asserts that, despite the dangers of encounters with Forest officials and the severity of penalties ‘the peasantry of forest villages continued to take deer in the royal forests’.39 Her evidence, taken from the Forest eyre rolls, proves that there was indeed a rich tradition of peasant deer poaching, much of it carefully planned and performed. Some peasants were regular hunter-poachers, using a range of appropriate methods, many of which were exclusive to their class. These men were, of necessity, skilled hunters, who were ‘lerned’ in their own fashion, their knowledge the familial accumulation of centuries of living close to nature. Birrell clearly makes the point:

  These were methods which often demanded a knowledge of the habits and movements of the different types of deer and a degree of self-discipline and manual dexterity . . . which might be thought to fit ill with the disdain for them which pervades the hunting treatises, and even to compare favourably with the aristocratic methods which these same treatises extol.40

  The records indicate that the commonest method used by peasants to hunt deer, and also lesser beasts, was the trap or snare. Local men were accused at virtually every eyre of taking deer cum laqueis, with snares, or of being in possession. It is inevitable that such devices were home-made and of cheap, easily
obtainable materials including horsehair, withies and, especially, cord. Snares were small, light and easily concealed so were ideal for poaching. A trappa was more complex, having wooden parts such as a frame, and a snare. These were ingenious devices; some snares and traps entangled the antlers, others the feet. ‘Engines’ are also specified and the commonest consisted of sharpened stakes to impale the deer. Two types of projectile were used. The sling, hurling a stone, was a deadly weapon and in the right hands could kill a stag, as the Sherwood Forest eyre for September 1280 records.41 Bows and arrows were also used but were not particularly favoured by peasant poachers, probably because they were too noticeable in the forest and also owing to the risk of a wounded deer escaping. This reality seems very much at odds with the popular legend of the outlaw-poacher, invariably using his skill with the longbow to shoot the king’s deer. In reality, a single arrow seldom dropped a large beast such as a deer.42 Forest peasants also did not favour the use of large nets to catch deer, probably as these were bulky, heavy, difficult to conceal, tedious to make, expensive to buy and were confiscated if the deer poacher was apprehended.43

  Equally, much peasant poaching was opportunistic, reaping the wounded or unpicked products of legitimate and aristocratic hunters, as well as the odd stray deer and the victims of dogs or wolves. Taking advantage of such opportunities must have been second nature to the peasant men and women living and working in the holdings and villages of Forest environments.44 It is not too broad a generalisation to comment that such opportunist hunting is still a feature of rural areas, particularly those which include woods or forests. It is debateable whether scavenging the ungathered and lost quarry of the aristocratic hunt is ‘true hunting’, although this surely depended upon whether the deer was wounded, followed up, then killed, or found badly injured or dead and simply picked up. However, in the eyes of the law any situation involving taking deer was certainly poaching as the end product was venison. The scale of peasant deer poaching, as Birrell remarks, can only be guessed at, but it is very significant that peasant poachers appear in every Forest eyre she examined,45 a good indication of the universality of such illegal hunting in English Forests. It would, of course, be very useful if these often detailed records of the Forest courts mentioned peasants hunting and poaching beasts other than deer, but unfortunately they do not. The laws and records reflect the prevailing preoccupations of the upper classes with the dominant culture of deer hunting. Jean Birrell comments realistically on whether peasants poached other birds and beasts ‘It seems highly likely that they did and that the activities revealed by the forest eyre were only a small part of a wider picture.’46

  However, not all poaching was the work of peasants or those who lived outside the law. Evidence from the Forest courts, particularly the main courts of jurisdiction, the Forest eyres, indicates that medieval man (and, on occasion, woman), whatever his rank or class, found opportunities to hunt, whether legally or illegally. Poaching by all classes upon the ‘woody Grounds and fruitful Pastures, privileged for wild Beasts and Fowls of the Forest Chase, and Warren’47 was widespread and must be included within the generic term of hunting, whether legitimate or not.

  The opening sequence of The Parlement of the Thre Ages epitomises the romantic poaching ideal; the lawless hunter and dreamer in all the pride of his manhood48 ventures into the Forest on a May dawn ‘my werdes to dreghe,/ In’to þe schawes my-selfe a schotte me to gete/ At ane hert or ane hynde, happen as it myghte.’49

  Fanciful though the image first appears to the audience or reader, it soon becomes evident that the anonymous poet must himself have been a hunter, as the information he provides on the technique of lone stalking is fascinatingly realistic and accurate. First he camouflages himself ‘Bothe my body and my bowe I buskede with leues’;50 then he hides. He tests the wind after a hart has appeared and got wind of his scent:

  I waitted wiesly the wynde by waggynge of leues,/ Stalkede full stilly no stikkes to breke,/ And crepite to a crabtre and couerede me ther-vndere:/ Then I bende vp my bowe and bownede me to schote,/ Tighte vp my tylere and taysede at the hert.51

  The discomfort of remaining quiet and absolutely motionless while being bitten by gnats is vividly evoked:

  Then I maste stonde als I stode, and stirre no fote ferrere,/ For had I my [n] tid or mouede or mode any synys,/ Alle my layke hade bene loste pat I hade longe wayttede,/ But gnattes gretely me greuded and gnewen myn eghne . . . .52

  Having shot the hart, the hunter breaks it correctly, rewards his hound ‘Brayde [out] his bowells my berselett to fede’,53 and following the established custom ‘Cuttede corbyns bone and kest it a-waye’54 for the crows and ravens. The poet is specific in his term for the illegal hunter’s dog, a barcelet (or bercelet) which was a hunting dog trained to follow up wounded game, the ideal dog for a poacher. The Forest records of Cannock Forest (1270s) and Sherwood Forest (1329) both mention deer poachers possessing bercelets.55

  Now the hunter abandons gentlemanly procedures. Knowing that the slaying was a lawless act, he carefully conceals the pieces of carcass in a hole and a hollow oak, safe from both foresters and hunters who, doubtless, patrol this fee or section of the Forest:

  And heuede alle in-to ane hole and hidde it with ferne,/ With hethe and with hore masse hilde it about,/ Pat no fostere of the fee scholde fynde it ther-aftir;/ Hid the hornes and the hede in ane hologhe oke,/ Pat no hunte scholde it hent ne haue it in sighte.56

  The poet skilfully combines the ‘lernedness’ of the gentle hunter with the wily woodcraft of the experienced poacher, thus subtly recruiting the whole audience’s sympathy for the ‘gome alle in grene’. It is interesting and significant that ‘gentle blood’ or references thereto, such as the correct breaking of the hart, was esteemed by most members of medieval society, even by criminals.57 As has been discussed in a previous chapter, lone stalking was a popular form of hunting by all classes, and by its nature was a method ideally suited to poaching. James I of Scotland had it banned in 1424,58 though doubtless the effect of this legislation on poachers and poaching was minimal. Laws are only effective if they can be properly enforced and lone poaching was, and is, most difficult to control.

  Rights to hunt and to warren, and royal licences to hunt and take game, were privileges almost entirely restricted to members of the ruling classes. Game-stocked parks were the preserve of wealthy individuals and institutions. Yet, there was much poaching by the upper classes, whether intentional or not. Although members of the ruling classes tended to hunt in the Forests which were nearest their homes, as men who were always on the move visiting their properties and friends, they also hunted, legally or illegally, wherever they happened to be. In a sense, they regarded the whole countryside as a place where they had a right to hunt.59 Also, during the excitement of the mounted chase, when hounds were on to a strong hart and the field was spread out, boundaries must have been crossed and re-crossed many times without thought of ownership and rights. However, doubtless this was often used as an excuse for deliberate trespass and killing of the king’s deer. Undoubtedly, a title was an asset in such dubious situations if one was apprehended. In 1482 Queen Elizabeth Woodville wrote accusingly and peevishly to Sir William Stonor, a country gentleman of good estate, the Member of Parliament for Oxford and Knight of the Bath:60

  that ye have taken upon yow now of late to make maistries withynne our fforest and Chace of Barnewod and Exsille, and þat in contempt of us uncourteisly to hunt and slee our deer withynne þe same to our grete mervaille and displeasir.61

  Sir William was forgiven and later appointed one of the Knights of the King’s Body.62 The Forest Proceedings of the Duchy of Lancaster record that the Earl of Derby was prosecuted under the Forest Law for taking more than two thousand deer in the Forest of High Peak over a period of six years.63 The inordinate time-span before justice was enacted was no doubt due to the infrequent meetings of the Duchy of Lancaster Forest eyre. The eyre was the supreme Forest court and dealt with major offences, such a
s the Earl of Derby’s, and reviewed everything since the previous eyre. Officially, an eyre was held in each Forest every seven years, but in practice meetings became increasingly irregular, an extreme instance being fifty years.64 Some sixteenth-century poaching by gentry was apparently a surrogate for war, hunting and fighting containing similar elements of excitement, danger, violence and death. Around 1550, Sir William St Lo, accompanied by perhaps thirty others, poached thirty deer from a park in Somerset belonging to the Bishop of Bath and Wells. As a defiant gesture to the bishop and his keepers, he set up the deer heads upon pales in the same park, apparently encouraging others to hunt illegally in the game preserve.65 The examples of aristocrats and gentry poaching venison are endless. However, given the social context, aristocratic poaching is an unsurprising feature of the period. Hunting was an integral part of aristocratic culture and was encouraged, not only as a rehearsal for war but also as a symbolic substitute for combat in an England which was increasingly under the king’s rule. It enabled warrior-gentlemen to display feats of daring in the hunting field akin to those of war.66 Whether the hunting was lawful or unlawful was, one suspects, often irrelevant to the deed. The punishment, at worst a stiff fine, was worth the risk and probably added to the kudos of the action. Illegal hunting also attracted those gentlemen of questionable rank as it helped affirm their professed gentility and gallantry.67

  Abbots and lesser ranks of the Church were frequently convicted of poaching, but were liberally treated regarding licences to hunt the lesser game (not deer) legally in the king’s Forests. The question of the clergy hunting was never really clarified and it remained ambiguous throughout the later Middle Ages. The Patent Rolls of Edward II record that Godfrey, Abbot of Peterborough, was convicted of trespass for hunting without licence in the king’s Forest of Huntingdon, and of taking a doe. Thus in spite of his cloth, he was convicted like a layman although duly pardoned, perhaps owing to his high social status. The more exalted members of the Church were obviously legally hunting deer as they were allowed deer-leaps to ensure that their parks within the king’s Forest were kept well stocked.68 The function of these man-made sloping structures was to allow tenants of parks to drive deer from the unenclosed Forest into their own fenced reserves. They also allowed access by hunters in the surrounding Forest who were pursuing wounded deer taking shelter in the park. This sensible arrangement suited both the owner of the game rights and his tenant.69