Medieval Hunting (26 page)

The real amount of active involvement of women in hunting is unknown and probably impossible to quantify. What appears clear is that there were gender-specific roles and rituals associated with the noble hunt, reflecting a demarcation between male and female spheres in late medieval aristocratic society. Unfortunately, owing to the almost complete lack of textual and pictorial evidence, it is difficult to apply this sort of conclusion to commonalty women and their roles in hunting. It seems likely that in European peasant communities, traditionally conservative in attitude, the gender roles as regards hunting and food gathering were even more defined than in aristocratic circles. Hunting and killing quarry probably carried with it notions of masculinity, similar to those in present-day isolated ethnic communities. ‘Assisting' was more likely the female peasant role. A fifteenth-century Burgundian tapestry of peasants ferreting rabbits shows clearly this demarcation of roles based upon gender: the men net and despatch rabbits while their women serve as able assistants.
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However, this was still very definitely an active role for the peasant women. They were at the warren, taking an essential part, although one which was (no doubt) regarded by both sexes as subordinate to that of the male hunters, whose gender-defining main role, like that of their noble counterparts, was in killing the quarry. Taking life was the male prerogative, paralleled in the inescapable function of warriors, whatever their period or station in society. Women, as the earthly inheritors of the Blessed Virgin Mary, could not be expected to take life because of their ‘sacred' child-bearing function.

In her study of Forest court records, Jean Birrell has found very few records of peasant women being involved in poaching and these were under particular opportunistic circumstances. At night, deer habitually moved out from Forest covert into the fields, orchards and even gardens of peasant communities, in search of provender. They were still protected by Forest Law, however, and this sort of damage was naturally much resented by cultivators. The obvious solution, plus the attraction of fresh venison, was to take such trespassing beasts as best one could. Thus, a husband and wife from Sowerby despatched a (possibly wounded) hart in their garden within Inglewood Forest in 1280. A group of five men and women took a young deer in the village of Carlton which had strayed from Rockingham Forest. This occurred in February 1287 when fodder may have been particularly short in the Forest at this time.
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It is difficult to be certain, but here again, it appears likely these peasant women were assisting their men folk in killing isolated deer, rather than being the active takers of life.

It is interesting that some peasant women were involved in hunting in another way and that was as receivers of poached venison, a ‘passive' crime and a marginal element of peasant hunting. Rose Glade of Arnold was convicted of supplying a man caught in possession of venison in Sherwood Forest in 1272. Gillian, daughter of Roger le Dunte, of Minstead, was described as a receiver of John Salandryn and ‘others' in 1315.
⁸⁶
Why were peasant women involved in a criminal activity which carried the probability of severe penalties if the perpetrators were apprehended? The obvious answers are the considerable cash return and the fact that they were on the spot, but perhaps also their gender made them less likely to be suspected by the Forest authorities. Certainly, these village women and the other ‘fences' fulfilled a valuable role in the lucrative trade of distributing stolen venison.

T
he general picture which emerges is that hunting was universal and widely practised by members of all classes, and both sexes, within the hierarchy of late medieval society. It is fair to say that the practical and imaginative literature of the time is, by its nature and origins, élitist, and therefore almost entirely ignores hunting by the commonalty. This observation applies even more particularly to pictorial evidence and surely this is to be expected. The ruling classes did not patronise artists to commemorate the commons and peasantry at play. Naturally, nobles were interested in being featured at their own élitist pastimes and in how they spent their leisure. The commons, in contrast, worked for their living and did not have the privilege of leisure. The medieval Church supported the status quo, mollifying the toiling peasantry with the convenient teaching comment of St Benedict ‘
Laborare est orare
', meaning ‘To work is to pray'. The hunting manuals, written by gentle authors for the nobility and gentry, clearly demonstrate this preoccupation with élitism too. A very few hunting books contain evidence for more widespread practices, and these, together with other evidence, such as statutes, Forest court records, hunt establishment records and a very limited amount of illustrative material, support the view that the rest of society was also heavily involved in hunting. It is not that commonalty methods were any less effective than aristocratic practices. The chapters in
Livre de chasse
by Gaston Fébus on commonalty hunting methods show clearly that he considered them to be not only ingenious but also useful and instructive to gentle hunters. He was thus using these methods to teach gentlemen who otherwise might not have known about such practices. Fébus was not writing for common men, even though his treatise indicates a certain empathy with lesser hunters. Common men would not have had access to such books and were, in any case, largely illiterate. However, his awareness and acknowledgement of humble men hunting, and of the effectiveness of their pragmatic methodology, are important within the social context of late medieval society. Jean Birrell points out that though lower-class methods of deer hunting were scorned by gentlemen, peasant skills and knowledge were recognised when peasants were employed as
ductores
or guides, by hunting parties unfamiliar with the country and local deer population.
¹
Naturally, the people who lived in the Forests and in the unenclosed areas, knew all about taking game, their habitats, habits and movements. It was an everyday part of their life and must have provided a considerable part of their conversation. They did not need to read about the eating habits of the hart, wild boar or hare; they could observe them at close quarters in their own fields, orchards and gardens, and covertly in preserves. Hunting was a common feature of everyday life on the great estate. The marginal hunting pictures in
The Luttrell Psalter
indicate this and the few illustrations of peasant hunting show that Sir Geoffrey Luttrell acknowledged not only its occurrence but also its place within the structure of medieval rural society. Although all classes had some reasons in common for taking wild quarry (food and sport being the most obvious ones), social factors and gender relations, both related to rank and status, were also key elements. These latter factors are also directly responsible for the difficulties in elucidating the universality of hunting.

Examination of the textual and pictorial sources clearly demonstrates that there was a class structure within hunting indicated by dress, equipment, quarry type, and especially by language, methods and techniques. All men hunted, but in different ways, according to their rank. Each class perception of what constituted hunting must have been limited, and therefore biased, by these socio-economic and gender factors. However, there is much evidence that the common interest of hunting united the classes under certain conditions of dependence, enabling men to cross social barriers and even rise in rank and status. The legitimate vehicle for this was the royal and noble hunt establishment, with its social mix of trained and employed professional men and aristocratic hunters. Stealing venison and other game was the illicit vehicle of social equality, as anyone who poached, be they noble, priest, peasant or woman, committed the same heinous crime within the legislative strictures of an aristocratic deer-hunting culture. The Forest Laws were the social levellers in this particular way, although punishment appears to have been related to class and the ability to pay an appropriate fine. Ironically, game legislation united the classes in another, more lasting way. Those outlaws of myth and legend who poached the king's deer, particularly Robin Hood and his Greenwood band of merry men, became folk heroes, the admired icons of rich and poor alike. That all classes identified with these law-breakers is the real triumph of the anonymous fifteenth-century poets.

However, the 1390 Game Law spelled the end to commonalty hunting on unenclosed land and initiated an establishment policy, basically one of increased cooperation between Crown and great and small nobility, to restrict hunting to persons of ‘gentle' rank. This legal measure naturally added to the hardening of class divisions already apparent during the second half of the fourteenth century. The act was in fact seldom invoked or enforced over the next century, probably the result of the decline in population and the easing of pressure on resources, including game meat. However, Henry VII reissued the 1390 Game Law, revived the Forest eyres, targeted poaching and re-established royal authority in his Forests. Successive restrictive Game Acts passed by Tudor governments confirmed the sport and pastime of hunting as a privilege of the nobility and gentry.
²

Both the social dichotomy and universality of hunting are perfectly demonstrated by two manuscript pictures. The first is part of ‘The Trinity', an illustration from
The Hours of Marguerite D'Orléans
, made soon after her marriage to Richard, Count of Étampes in 1426.
³
The
bas de page
is of the standard hart hunt, the mounted field of both men and women, with professionals on foot, pursuing the quarry with hounds along a stream valley by the edge of a forest. Horns are being winded and the leading hunter steadies a cross-hilted spear to thrust at the hart. A hunt servant with his spear is waiting ahead in cover, his sturdy alaunt ready to seize hold of and bring down the quarry when it is wounded by the hunter. However, if we follow the stream up its course to the top right, we suddenly come on the tiny figure of a hunter, dressed in blue with red leggings and a red hat with a wickerwork game-bag strapped to his waist. He is concealed in a clump of Greater Reedmace, a plant often but incorrectly called ‘bulrush', beside the water's edge. This small but deadly figure is taking, quite literally, a pot-shot with his crossbow at a duck struggling to rise from the water, an ‘unsporting' action on his part, while other birds circle overhead in panic. This hunter is physically marginal to the main hunting scene, though still a part of it. He is also, in medieval eyes, marginal to the theme of hunting and yet an acknowledged, though lesser, element. The nobles hunt in aristocratic style, legitimately and in public, while he, a common hunter and almost certainly a poacher, is hunting unsportingly and covertly. The audience's eye is immediately caught by the exciting, colourful depiction of the glorious stag hunt; it is easy to overlook the lone insignificant figure. He is skilfully hidden from us, the audience, by the artist. This too mirrors reality; the illegal hunter lurks in hiding, far from the public gaze and unseen, but still a recognised feature of medieval hunting.

The second example is in the same tradition of dual depiction and is the June
bas de page
illustration in the Calendar of MS Egerton 1146, made around 1500.
⁴
At first glance, the scene is of classic hare hunting. The noble hunter, mounted on a splendid horse and accompanied by his hounds, pursues a hare through thick woodland. His companion has clearly been unhorsed, perhaps an indication of the danger of hunting at speed in the forest. However, this is not the whole story. Nearby, a poor man with a crossbow, probably a poacher, is also hunting, and he is taking a pot-shot at a rabbit on the field boundary, outside the Forest. Here we have many of the ingredients of legitimate aristocratic hunting: the hare as the noble quarry; hunting on horseback with hounds; the elaborate but practical and tidy dress of the hunter; his expensive equipment, including whip and spurs (his sword is hidden as it is carried on the left hip, as is the case in seven of the other Egerton Calendar pictures); the fine tack of the horses; the environment of the Forest; the danger and excitement of the mounted chase. There are also the elements of commonalty hunting: the rabbit, despised as true quarry but forbidden to men without rights of warren; hunting on foot; the green but ragged dress of the peasant; his lack of edged weaponry; the agrarian nature of the ground hunted, the field showing ridge and furrow cultivation with a growing green crop, presumably a variety of cereal; and a rabbit warren in the foreground. Importantly, this commonalty hunting, perhaps of the illegal variety, takes place outside the demarcated Forest, the hunting preserve of the nobility, but next to a warren. In addition, the face of the noble hunter is clearly depicted in profile in what is virtually miniaturist detail; he is a recognisable individual, as a medieval noble would be. In contrast, the face of the peasant is obscured by his crossbow. He is thus anonymous, just one of the rural masses; he could be anyone, it is not important. This was, of course, an age when individuality was still largely one of the prerogatives of the gently born but, increasingly, identification was a feature also being applied to, and used by, wealthier townsfolk, scholars and artists. The miniaturist is very cleverly giving an aristocratic audience the stereotypical picture of feudal social division, based upon certain signals they all would understand, and yet, at the same time, he is clearly indicating the universality of hunting. ‘Everybody does it but in different ways and for different quarry' is the sub-text to this miniature masterpiece. A tacit sympathy and acknowledgement can be detected in this picture by the patron, and/or the artist, for the common hunter, even the poor poacher. Moreover, it is the only picture from the cycle of twelve hunting scenes in the Calendar of MS Egerton 1146 which depicts a poor man hunting. The other eleven miniatures are, significantly, of aristocratic quarry and methodology.