Medieval Hunting

by Richard Almond

  Hunting and poaching by monks was widely practised and this is hardly surprising, given the noble background and upbringing of many monks and the rural setting of most monasteries. Monasteries such as Fountains, Rievaulx and Jervaulx lay at the centre of great estates which included good hunting country. The hunting field brought the lay gentry and their monastic neighbours together and the Leicester Abbey Chronicle states that in the mid-fourteenth century, the influence of Abbot Clowne with the local gentry was based upon his knowledge of hounds and venery.70 There were attempts from within the Church to curb illegal hunting and hawking by monks. For example, one of The Ordinances of the Prior and Chapter of Ely for 1314 states:

  Likewise, it is decreed that none among the brothers may keep for his own use, or for another on his behalf, greyhounds or birds of prey within the precinct of the monastery or elsewhere on the estate, without having obtained the permission of the prior; and this ordinance likewise must be observed everywhere within the jurisdiction of the monastery and by all manner of servants.71

  This was at least an effort to control sports officially disapproved of by the Church by the simple remedy of internal licensing. In this particular case, much depended upon the attitude and pre-dilections of the prior. He may have been a hunting man himself who was wise enough not to attempt to ban hunting and hawking by the brotherhood but rather to limit these sports by his own authority.

  Chaucer introduces his audience to the hunting cleric with his Monk in The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales:

  A MONK ther was, a fair for the maistrye,/ An out-rydere, that lovede venerye;/ A manly man, to been an abbot able./ Ful many a deyntee hors hadde he in stable.72

  He is thus a hard-rider to hounds with a stable full of hunters, the stereotypical hearty hunting cleric recognised by all, ignoring the ancient dictums of the Church. However, Chaucer is presenting a more complex picture, one which comments not only on clerics who broke the rules but also challenges the outmoded attitudes of the Medieval Church towards its own members. Although from a priory governed by the archaic and strict rules of St Maur and St Benedict, Chaucer’s Monk is one of the new men, behaving in modern ways:

  Ther as this lord was keeper of the celle,/ The reule of seint Maure or of seint Beneit,/By-cause that it was old and som-del streit,/ This ilke monk leet olde thinges pace,/ And held after the newe world the space.73

  Chaucer then makes it very clear that his Monk despises and indeed cares nothing for the old-fashioned regulations of the Church Fathers and would not waste his time reading or labouring. Let others, exemplified by Augustine, do that:

  He yaf nat of that text a pulled hen,/ That seith, that hunters been nat holy men;/ Ne that a monk, when he is recchelees,/Is lykned til a fish that is waterlees;/ This is to seyn, a monk out of his cloister./ But thilke text held he nat worth an oistre;/ And I seyde, his opinioun was good./ What sholde he studie, and make him-selven wood,/ Upon a book in cloistre alwey to poure,/ Or swinken with his handes, and laboure,/ As Austin [Augustine] bit? How shal the world be served?/ Lat Austin have his swink to him reserved.74

  This is why he has become a hard-riding hunter, sparing no expense:

  Therfore he was a pricasour aright;/ Grehoundes he hadde, as swifte as fowel in flight;/ Of priking and of hunting for the hare/ Was al his lust, for no cost wolde he spare.75

  Forest officials were not guiltless of poaching and abuse of their office during the fourteenth century. Some foresters were involved in illegal hunting on their own account and in permitting illegal hunting by others within their bailiwicks. Giles Beauchamp, the warden of the Forest of Groveley and keeper of Clarendon Park, was accused of various abuses and corruption over the twenty-three years he held office. These included hunting in the Forest himself, and allowing the Bishop of Salisbury, and on another occasion a knight, illegally to take does. Two of his predecessors were charged with similar offences in the conduct of their office.76 As mentioned in chapter six within the context of town residents hunting, students were also known to be poachers, hence the 1421 Statute of Henry V relating to problems of discipline at the University of Oxford. These poachers included clerks and scholars who took deer, hares and conies with dogs and greyhounds in many warrens, parks and Forests in Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire.77

  In Scotland, officials called currors were the backbone of Forest administration before 1499, being responsible for protecting the timber and deer. A statute of 1499 gave the responsibility for vert and venison to the forester-tenants. When a calf, fawn, roe-kid or any other deer was killed on his stead, the forester-tenant had to find the slayer or else pay the penalty himself.78 In the fifteenth century, the fine for the death of a hart was £10, and for killing a hind the fine was raised from £5 to £10 in the 1470s. In the early years of the sixteenth century, the illegal hunter faced the escheat of his dogs and weapons (the reversion of private property to the Crown), followed by a trial and fine, presumably still of £10.79 These huge fines were clearly fixed to be beyond the means of common people, so perhaps their real purpose was to deter the ruling classes from poaching. Their poaching was not only more serious in terms of quantities of venison taken; it also set a bad example to the commons and encouraged flouting of the law, an important consideration in maintaining the king’s peace. These were obviously factors which also applied to England and Wales, as well as Scotland.

  At the other end of the scale from poaching venison and other game was the illegal taking of rabbits. Skilled warreners were much sought after and were among the highest paid manorial officials. Mark Bailey quotes a salary of over £5 per annum for an Ely Abbey warrener of 1411; this surprisingly high pay was to compensate for the danger and isolation of a warrener’s occupation rather than the amount of labour the job entailed.80 The main purpose of a warren to its owner was economic, not sporting, and lay in the value of meat and rabbit skins produced.81 Warrens were profitable targets for poaching, which was conducted on all scales from random opportunism to multiple habitual offenders. The dedicated poacher reared lurchers (crossbred dogs trained to hunt silently) and greyhounds which were released into the warren to pick off and retrieve conies one by one. Bailey makes the point that the large number of poaching cases in the court rolls of the East Anglian Breckland reflects the importance of illegal hunting as a source of income to the local peasants. Rabbit poaching was so lucrative that, inevitably, highly organised gangs were formed, operating on a large scale in the bigger warrens of the Breckland.82 Their valuable products were no doubt distributed in the larger towns and particularly in London, where a well-organised market catered for illicit venison and game.83

  The Forest court records from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries show that small gangs of peasant poachers, made up of men from neighbouring villages within a Forest, were stealing venison, often on a regular basis. The evidence is not always clear, but it appears that many were led by men from a higher social station,84 a significant point which also emerges from an earlier study of criminal gangs operating in the fourteenth century. Poaching was only one of the many crimes committed by criminal gangs in the first third of the fourteenth century85 and in later centuries. In Crime and Public Order in England in the Later Middle Ages, John Bellamy examines this phenomenon of criminality and violence. Stealing farm stock, as well as game, on a large scale was common. The poachers’ motives were various: filling the larder, settling scores and exacting revenge, making a profit, even the thrill of the chase. In many cases of raids on parks and chases there was collusion by keepers and their underlings,86 who were presumably bribed or pressurised in some way. It is likely that some poachers may have had kinship ties with estate workers, foresters or hunt employees. Records show that the leaders of such gangs were drawn for the most part from the gentry, the knights and esquires, often the younger sons.87 One of the most notorious gangs was that of James and John Coterel who were raiding estates and parks in the late 1320s. They were the younger sons of a Derbyshire gentleman.88 The Fo
lville brothers, leaders of another highly successful gang, were the sons of John de Folville, lord of Ashby-Folville in Leicestershire and Teigh in Rutland. Lord John Fitzwalter, another aristocrat, was an Essex gang leader during the 1340s. The rank-and-file members of the gangs appear to have had more humble origins,89 however, and thus possibly more excuse for poaching. In support of this, Bellamy quotes several cases in which convicted poachers were proved to be suffering from shortages of food.90 Gang raiding and poaching as a distinct phenomenon continued into the first third of the fifteenth century, culminating with Richard Stafford, called ‘Frere Tuk’, a gang leader and Sussex knight, making peace with the law around 1429.91 There was also much poaching with violence by armed men during the reigns of Richard II, Henry IV and Henry V in chases, parks and warrens. Some of those who were apprehended claimed rights of chase within these areas, possibly with justification.92 An interesting point to emerge from Bellamy’s research is that even within the context of lawless hunting by gangs, social status and division of labour according to class remain paramount. It seems likely that the education of the upper classes, with its emphasis upon leadership, is a key element in poaching-gang structure.

  Although large-scale poaching of game by gangs and groups of men can hardly be termed ‘sporting’, the methods which must have been employed, those ‘villainous techniques’ known to and remarked upon by Fébus and the Duke of York, mean it has to be included within the wider parameters of hunting.

  In a deer-hunting culture, most references to the serious crime of ‘poaching’ relate to stealing venison. It is well known that there were severe penalties for poaching in the twelfth century. In Policraticus, John of Salisbury notes that ‘the punishment prescribed is confiscation of goods or loss of life or limb’.93 These punitive penalties were based upon the 1016 Charta de Foresta of King Canute, a possibly fictitious piece of pre-Conquest legislation adopted and enforced by the Normans. The statutes were heavily biased in favour of the king, and stipulated that poaching deer was a capital offence.94 William the Conqueror loved hunting, particularly the ‘great deer’, and established the Nova Foresta in 1079 as a preserve in which he could hunt deer. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, written sub anno 1087, makes scathing comment on William and his punitive Forest Laws:

  He made many deer-parks, and he established laws therewith; so that whosoever slew a hart, or a hind, should be deprived of his eyesight. As he forbad men to kill the harts, so also the boars; and he loved the tall deer as if he were their father. Likewise he decreed respecting the hares that they should go free. His rich men bemoaned it, and the poor men shuddered at it. But he was so stern that he recked not the hatred of them all; for they must follow withal the king’s will, if they would live or have land, or possessions, or even his peace.95

  However, the 1217 Carta de Foresta of Henry III confirmed the liberties obtained in Magna Carta of 1215.96 A seminal section in the latter favouring a more just system, particularly for the commons, reads:

  48. All evil customs connected with forests and warrens, foresters and warreners, sheriffs and their officials, river-banks and their wardens shall immediately be inquired into by twelve sworn knights of the same county . . . and shall be utterly abolished by them so as never to be restored . . .97

  Henry’s Charter also stipulates that:

  No man from henceforth shall lose either life or limb for killing our deer; but if any man shall be taken and convicted for taking our venison, he shall make a grievous fine if he hath anything whereof, and if he hath nothing to lose, he shall be imprisoned a year and a day; and after the year and day expired, if he can find sufficient sureties he shall be delivered, and if not he shall adjure [entreat] the Realm of England.98

  A new Carta de Foresta was enacted in 1224 by Henry III and this was almost identical to his first charter. Henry’s Forest Laws apparently show a concern to shield the English public from suspicion and oppression by the officials protecting the king’s game.99 A new leniency had, in certain important areas such as the mutilation and execution of convicted deer poachers, replaced the harsher attitudes of the Norman kings. The penalty meted out in the Forest court for most offences was a fine. The accused, if found guilty, was in mercy or amerced a sum of money commensurate with the crime committed. The administering of this more proportionate justice, and the modification of it according to the rank of the convicted poacher, is, however, open to allegations of corruption, as the cases quoted in the earlier part of this chapter demonstrate. It must be said, though, that modification cut both ways. As regards fining, the matching of monetary punishment to status was no bad thing and a sensible modus operandi by the Forest eyres. On the other hand, the records indicate that poachers of high or ecclesiastical rank appear to have been forgiven or discharged without payment more often than humble illegal hunters. The seminal fact is that members of all classes were undoubtedly involved in poaching and the alternatives cited in lines five and six of the Henrician Charter concerning the convicted poacher’s estate, imply that in the early thirteenth century rich and poor were expected by the authorities to partake in illegal hunting and were to be treated accordingly. Perhaps the new Angevin legislation owed less to reasons of justice and more to political and social expediency. Importantly, the sovereign continued to benefit from fines imposed for infringements of Forest Law.

  It is self-evident that the Forest Charters were aimed at preserving and protecting the vert and venison for the king, and also any fortunate men or women who were licensed by the king to hunt in the royal Forests. These laws potentially affected all other persons in England, including members of the nobility and the Church. The Ricardian statute of 1390, the first Game Law to be passed which came under the jurisdiction of the Common Law courts, not the Forest courts (increasingly the Forest eyres), restricted the rights of hunting to those with an income from land of at least 40s per year. This effectively excluded the majority of the population, so was socially restrictive. Sir William Blackstone, in his Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–9), summed up the situation very succinctly:

  Though the forest laws are now mitigated, and by degrees grown entirely obsolete, yet from this root has sprung a bastard slip, known by the name of Game Law, now arrived to, and wantoning in its highest vigour: both founded upon the same unreasonable notion of permanent property in wild creatures; and both productive of the same tyranny to the Commons: but with this difference; that the forest law established only one mighty hunter throughout the land, the game laws have raised a little Nimrod in every manor.100

  After 1340 the Forest eyres met less and less often, so the courts became increasingly ineffective in controlling the sovereign’s vert and venison. At the same time, it appears that the licences to impark and the grants of free warren increased. These grants from the Crown extended the exclusive nature of hunting.101 The Forest Laws further declined into semi-abeyance during the fifteenth century.

  However, the new Tudor monarch, Henry VII, was a dedicated and enthusiastic hunter, determined at the outset to redress this decline of royal authority. Politically, he also regarded unrestricted hunting as a likely cover for conspiracies. In consequence, the Game Laws were revived at the outset of the Tudor monarchy. The Game Act of 1485 was the first legislation to make hunting at night or in disguise a felony.102 The mid-Tudor period brought outbreaks of popular unrest and each one resulted in new and more restrictive legislation. The northern Pilgrimage of Grace and other lesser disturbances resulted in the Game Acts of 1539–40, consisting of punishments for new categories of hunting offences, including hunting in disguise or at night in royal parks and Forests, and stealing eggs or fledglings of falcons or hawks from the king’s manors. These were enforced under Common Law by the local assizes and quarter sessions. By the early sixteenth century, poaching offences appear more and more often in records for the Court of Star Chamber and the Duchy Court of Lancaster.103 In 1547, Edward VI repealed all of the capital game offences enacted in 1539–40. However, the
great destruction of deer parks and game, the result of widespread riots and rebellions in 1549, led to a three-year revival of the capital penalty for those game offences specified in the 1539–40 Game Acts. A further act of 1549–50 was passed to try and counter large-scale deer poaching in the king’s parks. These were all made felonious offences. Elizabeth was more practical and realistic than her predecessors, making game offences misdemeanours which were punishable by three months’ imprisonment, treble damages caused and seven year sureties for good behaviour.104

  By the early seventeenth century game legislation and enforcement were vehicles of royal prerogative and aristocratic privilege. Even the common lands and wastes, places where commoners secretly hunted, were affected by restrictive legislation and by game preservation schemes, such as enclosures, implemented by the landowners. The Game Laws of later centuries highlight the doctrine of the absolute and unqualified rights of private property,105 which embraced the ownership of specified wild animals, including rabbits, on one’s own land. These laws became the foundation for the notoriously draconian enactments of Georgian and Victorian England, which together with the harsh Norman Game Laws, appear to have shaped popular public opinion on game legislation. As a matter of interest, Forest Law in the New Forest, neglected and almost forgotten except by Forest freeholders, formally ended in 1964.