Medieval Hunting

by Richard Almond

  In the northern Italian city states during the later Middle Ages game laws were also a feature of hunting. For example, restrictive laws were introduced in Verona, a city controlled by the Republic of Venice, concerning game seasons and the rights of various classes of person to hunt different types of game. By the fifteenth century, the rulers of Milan (the Visconti), Ferrara (the Este) and Mantua (the Gonzaga) had enclosed huge areas as hunting parks from which the commonalty were excluded. These hunting reserves were an important representation of each individual prince’s or noble’s power, and the grounds and game were accordingly protected and preserved by their feudal authorities. There were stiff fines for trespass and harsher penalties for poaching. In the park at Pavia, for example, night trespassers were fined the huge sum of 50 florins or would have a foot amputated. In the same park there was a sliding scale of fines for poaching game, apparently based upon size, ranging from an immense 100 florins for taking a hart or fallow buck to 2 florins for a quail.106 These penalties were intended to be punitive and punished not only the crimes of trespass and poaching but, perhaps more significantly, the act of defying the power and influence of the recently established princes and nobles. Their intention was thus very different to the Game Laws in England where a poacher was punished for his crime of poaching and fined according to his status and ability to pay.

  In Saxony at the beginning of the fifteenth century Game Laws still allowed peasants to hunt small game and predators, but this right was removed after 1500 when hunting became the privilege of the ruling classes. This created great bitterness as the peasants could no longer protect their crops, orchards and stock. Restrictions affecting the rural peasantry included limiting the height of fences, prohibiting the use of pointed fence posts to prevent deer injuring themselves, collaring dogs with wooden bars or clubs to prevent them hunting game, and taking away the ancient right of pannage (turning out pigs to pasture, particularly to eat acorns in the autumn) in the Forests. However, villagers were still required by feudal law to provide the labour needed for big hunting days, particularly driving game to the hunters at their stands. These restrictions and obligations fuelled popular discontent and resulted in uprisings such as the Peasants’ War of 1524–5.107 Such legal restrictions on peasant hunting were politically self-destructive as they denied men not only their personal freedom but also one of their few important sources of protein. An increase in unlawful hunting was an inevitable consequence, in addition to the more serious problems of peasant discontent and rebellion.

  The underlying problem was that many people enjoyed poaching. Perhaps the deep-seated instinct and psychological need to hunt, whatever one’s station in society, is one of the more valid reasons why poaching was so widespread during the later Middle Ages. Certainly, it appears that in England the problem of illegal hunting was difficult to contain under the system of the Forest courts and required some measure of reform from the late fourteenth century onwards. The infrequent number of prosecutions after 1400 under the 1390 act suggests that this attempt to control poaching by Common Law was also ineffective. Reforms to the Game Laws during the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries demonstrate the growing importance of class privilege in establishing a rigid structure of hunting legislation. What is also demonstrated by such ubiquitous and determined illegal hunting over several hundred years is the mistake of equating poaching with class. Sources show clearly that members of all levels of society were involved in illegal hunting; to them their position in society was either of no consequence or, at most, marginal, to the act of poaching. This activity not only crossed social barriers; in some more extreme cases, such as outlawry and poaching gangs, it actually united men from varied backgrounds in another common cause, outwitting the law.

  SIX

  Medieval Dianas

  The previous chapters have shown the economic and social importance of hunting and hawking in the late medieval European world and how these activities provided sport, exercise, preparation and training for war, social contact, food and subsistence, and also pleasure. Although hunting and falconry were extensively written about in the instructional manuals and treatises and commonly figure in romantic literature, virtually all late medieval contemporary writings ignore the role and practical involvement of women in any form of hunting. There is, however, a disparate and considerable corpus of evidence, particularly in illustrative sources, which indicates that women at all levels of society were involved in hunting in its broadest sense, ranging from deer hunting by aristocratic ladies to food collection by peasant women.

  Recent research indicates that women were actively involved in virtually every aspect of medieval life at all social levels, although in many cases only exceptionally. For example, Jeremy Goldberg’s work has demonstrated the active participation of women in a wide variety of trades and even guilds in fifteenth-century towns.1 Townswomen, hitherto largely unresearched because of a dearth of direct written evidence, achieved roles and status within late medieval urban society which earlier historians had not considered likely or even possible. Compton Reeves points out that women were exempted from that part of the Sumptuary Statute of 1363 ordaining that artisans were to confine themselves to one craft, as women were ‘often engaged in multiple craft labours such as brewing, baking, and spinning as part of their normal activities’.2 However, no evidence has emerged, as yet, of women being employed at any level as professionals in royal, or noble, hunt establishments. Hopefully future research may produce some examples. In spite of this exception, and given the tidal wave of interest in medieval women and their functions and status, it is surprising that the subject of women and hunting has been neglected by modern researchers and writers.

  The general impression gleaned from late medieval art and literature, almost entirely produced and written by men for men, is that high-ranking women were usually limited to the passive function of decorative audience, admiring, applauding and occasionally receiving symbolic parts of the carcass, but only rarely participating in the dangerous and unseemly excitement of the stalk or chase. John Cummins endorses this view when he remarks that ‘for women to take part in the rigours of classic “par force” hunting, as opposed to its social preliminaries and aftermath, must have been a rarity’.3 This remark is based upon his extensive studies of the illustrations in practical manuals and manuscripts. Illustrations of women as active participators in hunting activities have long been interpreted by most historians as being part of the ‘world upside-down’ tradition. There is much persuasive evidence for this viewpoint of female involvement in masculine activities. Veronica Sekules comments ‘Scenes of women hunting are quite common . . . but they do not always document known practice’. She points out that the Taymouth Hours is prefaced by the inscription ‘Cy comence jeu de dames’ (‘Here begins the sport of ladies’) and continues that the pictures may have been intended to be amusing, in the ‘world upside-down’ tradition, or to be allegorical, referring to the pursuit of men by women and vice versa.4 Some of the illustrations in Queen Mary’s Psalter showing women engaged in jousting, fighting and other male occupations are quite probably of figurative and metaphoric, rather than literal, significance. The two damsels tilting with lances but dressed in elegant robes provide a good example of this humorous reversal of roles.5 However, even with what at first sight appears to be the obvious satirisation of women, care in interpretation must be exercised. It is common knowledge that in the case of warfare there were notable exceptions to such generalisations of ‘world upside-down’ reading, such as the female warriors Jeanne d’Arc and Jeanne Hachette, as well as several cases of female Orders of Knighthood. The Orden de la Hacha in Catalonia was founded in 1149 by Raymond Berenger, Count of Barcelona, to honour the women of Tortosa who helped defend the town against Moorish attack. The Order of the Glorious Saint Mary was founded by Loderigo d’Andalo, a noble of Bologna, in 1233. There is also evidence of women serving in the established military orders of the Teutonic Knights, Knights Hospitaller a
nd Order of Saint John, providing more than the simple provision of aid, and undertaking other menial and Hospitaller functions.6 These functions may have included some kind of armed role as female warriors.

  Like the hare which, as discussed in chapter three, often appears in ‘world upside-down’ scenes in marginal pictures, particularly in an opposite role such as the hunter instead of the quarry,7 women seem to have been a favourite target for male satire in medieval manuscript margins and other pictorial sources. Again like hares, women often feature in ‘world upside-down’ misericords, having the characteristics of Eve and being represented as rebellious, vain, lustful and gossiping. Misericords frequently present a general picture of domestic strife between the sexes with women depicted as the winners.8 They are also commonly shown indulging in male pursuits such as hunting, jousting and fighting. Hares were also, like women, regarded as ambiguous creatures, characterised by craftiness and foolishness, the ability to appear and disappear mysteriously and having the power of transformation into and from a witch.9 To the medieval male mind, the close connection between women and hares was an established fact and this traditional association is continued by modern hare hunters who always refer to the quarry as ‘she’, irrespective of its sex.10 Another hunting personification term for the hare is ‘puss’, both an informal term for a girl or young woman, and an archaic word probably derived from the Middle Low German pus, meaning a hare.11 The perceived similarities between women and hares in the Middle Ages may be the reason why the hare is perhaps the commonest of animals to figure in the margins of medieval illuminated manuscripts, although its satirical guise varies from hare-hunter and falconer, to hare-knight, cleric, judge and hare-witch.12 Men, it seems, were preoccupied with the representation of women in forms other than those which they deserved or were entitled to.

  Of course, there is a temptation to accept illustrative evidence too readily as being a true record of reality and actual practice. No doubt many, if not most, illustrations are idealised by intent. However, there is also a danger of interpreting all such evidence, particularly women hunting, as symbolic and without practical significance. It seems more reasonable to take a middle view, conceding that some illustrative evidence may, and in a lesser number of cases probably does, reflect real practices. This notion is not revolutionary but in the face of the ‘world upside-down’ school is certainly radical, and it is supported by three significant points. Firstly, there are many short, often indirect, textual references to women hunting. Secondly, it is accepted that women were active participators in the sport of hawking; why not hunting? Thirdly, evidence from other periods is completely positive as regards women of rank hunting13 and to suggest that hunting was an exclusively male preserve at any level of medieval society is ludicrous and exhibits a complete lack of understanding of female human nature.

  The enduring historical lack of reference to women and hunting seems likely to be the continuation of a long-established tradition based upon male expertise, education and authorship. The apparent lack of physical involvement by women in hunting wild quarry – apart from hawking for which there is a mass of evidence – has been perpetuated by male writers on the subject for centuries. Of course, there were relatively few women writers generally, so the lack of female narrative in hunting is hardly surprising.

  Four of the most influential medieval manuals on the techniques and practical methods of hunting, already used extensively in this study, provide examples of this overt gender exclusiveness. In chronological order these canonical manuscripts are:

  The Art of Hunting, written by William Twiti, c. 1330;

  Les Livres du roy Modus et de la royne Ratio, written by Henri de Ferrières, c.1376/7;

  Livre de chasse, by Gaston Fébus, begun in 1387;

  The Master of Game, produced by Edward, Duke of York, c. 1406/13.

  All four texts are, seemingly, completely male-oriented books of instruction, written by men for men. Women, as a separate gender, are not mentioned or acknowledged. Or are they? The concluding passage of the Shirley Manuscript of The Master of Game14 provides an exception to this apparent rule. Edward of Norwich concludes with the hope that all his readers ‘that hathe herde or rude this lytell tretys’, have approved of it and corrected it as necessary according to their own knowledge. He then continues:

  And in my simple manner as best I could and as might be learned of old and many diverse gentle hunters, I did my business in this rude manner to put the craft and the terms and the exercise of this said game more in remembrance and openly to the knowledge of all lords, ladies, gentlemen and women, according to the customs and manners used in the high noble court of this Realm of England [my italics].15

  Although Edward specifies only courtly women, ‘ladyes’ and ‘wymmen’, he does acknowledge that they had heard or read his book of instruction. Not only were women hunting but, more significantly, they too had specialised knowledge and were ‘lerned’ in the art of hunting, in the same manner as their men folk. This does make sense; people cannot participate in any sport or pastime without acquiring skills and knowledge. In reality, then, we can conclude that one of the major gender divisions, the ‘learnedness’ much prized and vaunted by men, did not exist.

  Mention must be made also of the Boke of Saint Albans, a treatise covering the male preserves of hawking, hunting and heraldry, whose authorship is traditionally credited to a female writer, Dame Juliana Berners. Nicholas Orme comments that this female authorship is an unusual indication that women might possess, or be thought to possess, a detailed knowledge of hunting techniques and be able to pass them on.16 There is, however, a long-standing controversy regarding the authenticity of the author’s gender. Whoever the author was, the Boke of Saint Albans was probably compiled in the early 1480s from other earlier sources, certain indicative fragments being recognisable. The complete manual was printed by the London printer Wynken de Worde in 1486.17

  The fact that Dame Juliana is also credited with a Treatise on Fishing18 makes her authorship of the Boke of Saint Albans questionable, as at this time fishing was a very popular pastime with a consequently low status compared to the ‘gentil’ sports of hunting and hawking. A significant part of the reason for this attitude was that real gentlemen regarded fishing as a ‘tame pursuit’ lacking the dangers of hunting.19 Fishing was also cheap, requiring little specialised equipment, unlike hawking, so was not restricted by cost to the wealthy, an important element in aristocratic pastimes. Until the preparation for war aspect lost its importance, ‘fishing with an angle’ remained a poor second to pursuing quarry upon horseback or on foot. It thus seems questionable, though not impossible, that the same author would have written sporting manuals of instruction for both aristocratic and commonalty readers. The Boke of Saint Albans does make a clear distinction between netting and trapping fish, an occupation of ‘crafty men’, and ‘of fishing with an angle . . . one of the disports that gentlemen use’. Maurice Keen points out that it is fly-fishing that is referred to here as the Boke contains several patterns for tying artificial flies. He continues to explain that a ‘disport’ is ‘a stylish, “gentle art”, fit for the pursuit of gentlemen in their free time’.20 However, the hunting and hawking manuals stress practical methodology and procedures within socially acceptable sporting boundaries, tacitly ignoring the provision of meat aspect, whereas fishing books are essentially practical texts lacking ritual, concerned with filling the bag in the most effective manner. In spite of favourable inclusion in the Boke, fishing at that time was thus analogous with pragmatic commonalty methods of hunting for subsistence and therefore, perhaps, with overtones of poaching. It must be realised that in the Middle Ages the status of a sport partly rested upon its necessity function. For the aristocracy, hunting was a leisure pursuit that emphasised both social superiority and masculine notions of military service. Thus if hunting was generally conceived of as a ‘masculine’ pastime, then perhaps medieval authors could not accept the active participation of women, so th
ey took the least controversial route and did not acknowledge them in their books.

  Literary sources frequently mention women hunting in classical antiquity, such as Theseus’s Queen Hippolyta and her younger sister Emily in Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale21 and in Arthurian legend there is the lady who hunts accompanied only by women. This great huntress ‘overshotte the hynde, and so by myssefortune the arow smote sir Launcelot in the thyke of the buttok over the barbys’.22 A significant accident regarding gender roles and where the arrow hit; also an extremely painful incident bearing in mind the wide splayed barbs of the type of hunting arrow used typically for large game. There are also many medieval German sources in which ladies accompany or actually participate in the hunt, but again, most of these are motivated by an established plot or love allegory. References to contemporary medieval women taking an active part in hunting remain conspicuously absent and only one fifteenth-century German professional manual refers to female participation.23

  The occasional references in textual sources to women and hunting can be tantalisingly brief. Thus, one of the earliest references to English fox hunting dates from 1221, when Henry III gave the Abbess of Barking permission to chase the fox in Havering Park, Essex.24 This reference is interesting for a variety of reasons: the ‘verminous’ nature of the quarry being hunted, and the gender and pious occupation of the person to whom the permit was granted. As earlier stated, the Church officially disapproved of its members hunting and hawking, although one or both activities were practised by many members of all levels of the First Estate. It is tempting to assume that the abbess hunted the foxes in Havering Park herself on horseback with hounds, and to link the low status of the fox, a ‘non-noble’ beast, to that of women, but there is no evidence to elucidate either of these intriguing points. It is more likely that the male servants of the abbey carried out the necessary control of the park foxes, which had probably been worrying sheep, by some effective but non-sporting commonalty hunting methods such as netting or trapping. If that were the case, then it can hardly be cited, as it has been on several occasions, as the first recorded example of English women being actively engaged in fox hunting.