Medieval Hunting (8 page)

Dame Juliana Berner's allocation of species has aroused much controversy over the years, some authorities accepting the list as a piece of social reality, others dismissing it as nonsense. It was described as ‘interesting but fanciful' in the 1920s, and ‘pretty fair nonsense' and ‘partly a piece of fun' in the 1980s.
⁷⁶
These twentieth-century observations contain much truth, no doubt, as particular occupations qualified for satirical comment. John Cummins points out that the physically fragile musket, the male sparrow hawk ‘would suit the holy-water clerk because it hardly eats anything and because its neurotic behaviour would drive a profane layman to perdition'.
⁷⁷
This is also probably a jibe at the established Church as priests were supposedly forbidden to indulge in hunting or hawking.
⁷⁸

However, whether or not the catalogue reflected reality, part-reality or merely the barbed wit of its author is not really the point. What is important is that the list reveals an underlying social comment, which tells us that not only was late medieval society deeply divided into upper and lower strata (common knowledge and hardly new) but that medieval writers felt it was necessary to highlight the division between rich and poor. Whether their illustration is serious or satirical is less important than the underlying social point and this has been successfully communicated to us, the literate audience, for hundreds of years.

Of course, the list in the
Boke of Saint Albans
can provide a perfect vehicle for lampooning society, and to the medieval mind birds of prey were ideal subjects for this sort of social satire. There are many different species, each with its own distinct and well-known characteristics which could be compared to members of the ruling élite. Also, like humans, they come in all shapes and sizes, from the huge, imperious eagle to the tiny, delicate merlin. Add to these natural points that hawking was seen as a pastime of the upper classes, and one has all the ingredients necessary for successful hierarchical imagery which can be read on several levels.

What, then, of the two birds near the end of the list allocated to common men, the goshawk for a yeoman and the tiercel (here, the male of the species) for a poor man? Do these categories indicate that commoners were involved in hawking? The answer is both yes and no. The goshawk was cast off from the fist, and had a reputation for being very highly strung, difficult to man (tame) and keep healthy. However, it would take partridge, pheasant, bustard, hares and rabbits. The goshawk has been called the most dynamic and successful of all hunting birds and John Cummins remarks that they were ‘a great asset to the kitchen, but rather on the level of modern rough-shooting as compared to driven game'.
⁷⁹
They were very effective hunters but did not possess the ‘nobility' of the peregrine and gyrfalcon, so in the medieval mind may have been consigned to lesser ranks of men. In
The Goshawk
, T.H. White, who acknowledges the authority of the
Boke of Saint Albans
, remarks of his own newly acquired bird ‘a goshawk was the proper servant for a yeoman, and I was well content with that'.
⁸⁰
However, it is unlikely that the
yeman
of the
Boke
would be a landholder of intermediate social status, a man who had to work his land for a living, or an artisan living and working in a town. Rather the term refers to a man of intermediate status employed in an aristocratic household who had the time to hawk, perhaps as part of his employment as an officer of the establishment and companion to his lord. Alternatively, it is a yeoman falconer who is referred to in the
Boke
and flying a goshawk formed part of his training as a professional falconer in the mews of the lord.
⁸¹
This leaves the ‘powere man' with his goshawk tiercel, a bird of less weight and power, of lesser status than the female and even more difficult to man. The author of the list is using the word ‘poor' in an ambiguous way. An economically poor man, or a peasant, would not have the means to buy and equip, train and maintain a hunting bird. The phrase ‘poor man' is therefore most probably one of sympathy for the poor gentleman who has not the means to acquire a decent hunting bird, or the unfortunate mews employee with the wearisome task of caring for and flying such a fractious and, at times, unrewarding bird.
⁸²

For practical purposes, the falconer, whatever his station, relied principally on a handful of hunting species: the peregrine usually referred to as the ‘gentle' falcon, the gyrfalcon or gerfalcon, saker, lanner, alphanet, merlin, hobby, goshawk and sparrowhawk. However, it was the peregrine, the northern race of which was called the nebli, which was most favoured by gentle and professional falconers alike because of its devastating stoop and fierceness. This bird was also identified with, and a physiological extension of, the knight in armour.
⁸³
The Booke of Faulconrie or Hauking
, written in 1575, endorsed this notion, assigning various knightly character-istics and virtues to the peregrine:

There are seauen kindes of falcons, and among them all for hir noblesse & hardy courage, & withal the francknesse of hir mettell, I may, & do meane to place the Falcon Gentle in chiefe. The falcon is called the Falcon Gentle, for his [
sic
] gentle and curteous conditions and factions. In hart and courage she is valiant, ventrous, strong.
⁸⁴

The emphasis is on the ‘gentle' or ‘noble' nature of the bird, linking falcon and falconer in mutually reflected rank and status.

Textual and illustrative sources clearly show that hawking was an enormously popular pastime in England and Europe during the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance. By the reign of Queen Elizabeth I there were no restrictions on the possession of hawks or falcons and it appears likely that the sport reached its zenith in England at this time, paralleling the emergence of the new Tudor gentry out of the upper yeomanry. Shakespeare was certainly aware and conversant with the vocabulary, care and methodology of hawking, as is indicated by a speech by Petruchio in
Taming of the Shrew
,
IV
. i. 191, written 1593/4:

Thus have I politicly begun my reign, /And 'tis my hope to end successfully. /My falcon now is sharp, and passing empty; /and, till she stoop, she must not be full-gorged, /For then she never looks upon her lure. /Another way I have to man my haggard, /To make her come, and know her keeper's call, /That is, to watch her, as we watch these kites /That bate, and beat, and will not be obedient. /She eat no meat to-day, nor none shall eat; /Last night she slept not, nor to-night she shall not.
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Petruchio's speech is, of course, allegorical and he is using the imagery of falconry to describe his developing relationship and control over his wife Katharine, once a ‘shrew' but now a ‘falcon'. In this context, Shakespeare's apposite use of specialised hawking language demonstrates his understanding of both falconry and the female psyche. Such words include: ‘stoop', the dive of a falcon on to prey from a great height; ‘lure', the imitation quarry, often a pair of wings with a piece of meat attached, swung around by the falconer to tempt back his falcon; ‘haggard', an adult bird taken from the wild; and ‘bate', the wing-thrashing tantrum of a bird hanging upside down on her jesses. He is also well aware of the complexities of feeding a falcon and keeping her ‘sharp', on the edge of hunger, before using her to hunt live prey, and obedient to being called to the lure with its attendant reward. Bloated birds refused to hunt and, when released, would often fly off and perch in a tree until hunger drove them back to the lure.

Illustrative sources show clearly that royal and noble hunters tended to dress up, even extravagantly, when hunting and hawking. The noble hunters of the hart in
Livre de chasse
wear bright red, pink, blue or green robes and tunics, as do their counterparts in the 1465 version of
Roy Modus
.
⁸⁶
Thus mode of dress can be used to differentiate between the upper and lower (or ‘other') classes and, rather more obviously, between men and women. However, this can be a misleading generalisation as ‘correct dress' varies according to the authority consulted and upon the attitude of the individual hunter. For example, Emperor Frederick II, writing in 1248, includes advice on hunting garments in his chapter entitled ‘On the Equipment suitable for a Falconer Hunting Cranes (with a gerfalcon)'. He is very specific:

The skirts of his garments must be short (habeat pannos vestimentorum suorum curtos), so that they do not hamper his movements, and of a single colour, preferably beige or an earthen tint, and of such material as peasants wear; for such cloth may be exposed freely to the inclemency of the weather and to use in rough places. If when he goes out to hunt he wears fine clothes of various colours (that are easily distinguished), the birds he hopes to capture with the falcon will at once see him and will not tarry but will easily escape. He should wear a wide hat to make his face less visible to the cranes, who will, in consequence, be less frightened by his appearance.
⁸⁷

He also recommends that heavy leggings be worn.
⁸⁸

What a contrast this functional but drab gear makes with the gorgeously apparelled nobles riding out to hawk in the Calendar picture for August in the early fifteenth-century manuscript, the
Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berri
. In this, the second lady rider is particularly sumptuously dressed in a blue houppelande with gold decoration, and a white headdress, her horse caparisoned with a scarlet and gold saddle-cloth.
⁸⁹
Here, appearance is obviously much more important than trying to ensure success by blending in with the landscape. In contrast, the Morgan codex of
Livre de chasse
, made around 1410, possibly for John the Good of Brittany (1399–1442), has more sensible advice for noble hunters. The text prescribes dress of green cloth for the hunter in summer, with leather leggings to protect him from branches. His equipment includes a sword, a knife and a horn. Folio 59 of the manuscript shows two riders and four hunt servants, all of whom are dressed in green robes or tunics with brilliantly coloured leggings.
⁹⁰
The advice on summer wear from Fébus implies that hunting dress varied with the seasons. Probably in practice it had to, especially on the continent with its more extreme winters. The two snow scenes of the Calendar of MS Egerton 1146 demonstrate this practicality of keeping warm when out hunting. In both the illustrations for November, the boar hunt on foot, and December, the boar hunt on horseback with hounds, the hunter is shown warmly clad and muffled-up against the cold, as also is his lymerer in the latter miniature.
⁹¹
In the picture for December, both men's faces and headgear are covered in frost, an unusual detail of realism in illustrations of this type. In
The Hunters in the Snow
, painted in 1565, Pieter Bruegel the Elder skilfully emphasises the bitter cold of the Flemish winter by his rendering of the unsuccessful peasant hunters, dejectedly huddled into their inadequate rustic clothing.
⁹²

By the mid-sixteenth century, hunting and hawking dress for royalty and the nobility had become even more elaborate and less practical. The twelve months of hunting scenes of
Les Chasses de Maximilien
, woven in Brussels by the 1530s,
⁹³
well illustrate the emphasis on making an opulent impression in the Renaissance hunting field, particularly for gentleman-hunters. The month of December shows Maximilian's grandson Ferdinand on horseback, spearing a huge wild boar. He is wearing a short, frocked hunting-jacket in deep red with gold decoration and a fur collar. Even the hunt servants, who are on foot, are gorgeously apparelled.
⁹⁴
This was probably not always so, particularly for the less well-off and lower gentry, and in his edition of William Twiti's
The Art of Hunting: 1327
, Bror Danielsson writes that ‘As yet (
c
. 1300) there did not exist any special hunting dress. Everybody moved about in their everyday dresses, varied according to social status, even though the colour might be adapted to the environment.'
⁹⁵

Danielsson's assertion is rather misleading, because in spite of the opening statement, it clearly intimates that there
was
a special hunting dress and that it was green or some other natural colour. Hunting dress in the fourteenth century may well have been undifferentiated for many aristocratic hunters but this seems unlikely as a general rule. Hunting all day on horseback over every sort of terrain, but particularly in woodland, required some sort of appropriate wear which was protective, comfortable and denoted status. The pen drawings of hunting scenes in
Queen Mary's Psalter
show the gentry and nobility wearing wide, pleated ankle-length dresses with wide sleeves, round, open rolled necks and hoods. The king wears a white Spanish cloak on top of this, whereas the nobility wear a pelerine or overcoat. Gloves with long cuffs are worn, indicating gentility. Male headgear includes crowns, an assistant's hat and a felt hat, peaked out in front belonging to ‘probably a distinguished gentleman'. The ladies wear long smooth dresses, covering the whole of their feet when on horseback. These are simple garments with long sleeves, often supplemented by a smooth or pleated overcoat slit up to the hip. A scarf tied round the head, chin and neck secured the hood. A cleric in hooded, half-sleeved dress accompanies the king and his retinue out hunting.
⁹⁶

However, we must be careful here on the representation of hunting dress in art, whether it is found in an illuminated
bas de page
in the Calendar of a Book of Hours, a psalter or a royal tapestry. The great problem is assessing how close to reality the visual evidence is. Usually we have no way of knowing what the patron of illustrative material ordered in detail or the relative inputs of artist and patron. Did he or she require the artist to show the hunters in their ‘best' outfits? Were the hunt servants well dressed to enhance the overall richness of the illustrative scene and the status of the patron and the dominant figures? The answer to these two questions is probably ‘yes', given human nature and the desire to achieve several points with one work of art. Perfection in illustration is understandable and can be compared to a posed photograph. Whether these pictures represent the total reality of dress in the hunting field is another question, to which the most sensible answer is ‘probably partly'. No doubt there were royal and major aristocratic hunting days and events for which everybody, including the professional staff, was required to dress up accordingly and in the height of current hunting fashion, but for most hunting and hawking forays the mode of dress was probably less elaborate, more practical and certainly less expensive.