Medieval Hunting (15 page)

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 40
s
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 increasingly 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:

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 40
s
(£2) to be blanket cloth and russet stuff which could be bought at 12
d
(1
s
) 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.