Medieval Hunting (7 page)

The exclusive nature of hunting in respect of rank and status which is the main message gained from the main primary sources has, understandably perhaps, been perpetuated by many secondary source writers. In 1963, Derek Brewer expressed this conventional view as follows:

The amusements of most men in the court were active and outdoor. Of these hunting was the chief, and the sound of the dogs [
sic
], the bustle and excitement of gaily-clad riders, the thrills of the chase, the triumphant chanting of the horns, were amongst their highest joys.
⁴⁸

In 1970, A.C. Spearing commented:

Hunting was felt to be the most characteristic activity of the medieval aristocracy, the appropriate means by which in peace-time the aggressive instincts of what was still a warrior class might be given a dignified outlet.

He, too, highlights the importance of procedure and ritual, continuing ‘There is a proper way of doing everything, even cutting up the dead beast, and knowledge of this way is a prerogative of the aristocracy and their skilled servants.'
⁴⁹

Spearing believes the Gawain-poet was a ‘jantylman' (gentleman) writing for other ‘jantylmen', learned in the lore and language of hunting;
⁵⁰
there is no doubt this is correct as the anonymous author displays his own learned knowledge of hunting deer, wild boar and fox in all its procedural detail. There are 280 lines of the poem devoted to the hunting scenes compared with 370 to the conversations between Sir Gawain and the lady, an indication of the significance of hunting to the courtly narrative.
⁵¹
Interestingly, Rooney comments that
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
provides us with the only complete description of a stag hunt available in Middle English literature.
⁵²

More recent historians of the medieval period continue in the same vein. Nicholas Orme, writing of the education of the medieval English kings and aristocracy, says that hunting came second only to fighting as the most prestigious physical activity and it was widely practised by male and female aristocrats.
⁵³
He further remarks that throughout the later Middle Ages hunting was a favourite sport of royal princes, but the ‘lust for hunting' was not confined only to royalty in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; it spread throughout the aristocracy, right down to the children of the gentry. Hawking was equally popular as an aristocratic pastime but less demanding and more leisurely without the same educational status, presumably because of its lack of personal danger or resemblance to warfare.
⁵⁴
Marcelle Thiébaux writes ‘that men in the Middle Ages were passionately fond of the hunt', and the Anglo-Saxon and Norman kings of England restricted vast areas of forest for their own sport, notably the New Forest in Hampshire. The noble hunters, who had inherited or purchased legitimate rights, hunted as a form of recreation and military exercise.
⁵⁵

The sport of falconry, or hawking as it is more often called in the hunting texts, was, like the mounted chase, a prerogative of the nobility and gentry. In Spain, for example, the aristocratic Chancellor of Castile, Pero Lopez de Ayala, saw falconry as a superior and appropriate pastime for the aristocracy.
⁵⁶
The historian Abram, writing in the introduction to
The Art of Falconry,
believed that ‘the sport pre-eminently associated in our minds with the Middle Ages is hawking'.
⁵⁷
Although hawking was pursued by the same social groups as the chase, it was in some ways completely different from the fast, noisy and dangerous excitement of mounted hunting in which hounds pursued quarry that was often out of sight. It was, in contrast, a single combat, like that between knights, usually in full view of the participants.
⁵⁸
It was also a rather more sedate and introspective pastime, better suited to older men and ladies. Intelligent and truly dedicated falconers, such as Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, doubtless enjoyed the exacting nature of their sport. Falconry also lacked the ritualistic procedures of hunting, thus appealing to the individual and the aesthetic hunter, allowing the development of a more intimate relationship between man, falcon and quarry. However, hawking had a major drawback in that there was a frustrating period during the year when the birds were
mewing
, or moulting, in the dark of their quarters or mews, and therefore unfit to fly and hunt. Edward, Duke of York, comments adversely on this aspect in the Prologue to
The Master of Game
when he compares hawking and hunting:

For though it be that hawking with gentle hounds and hawks for the heron and the river be noble and commendable, it lasteth seldom at the most more than half a year. For though men find from May unto Lammas [1 August] game enough to hawk at, no one will find hawks to hawk with.'
⁵⁹

Noble falconers valued their hawks more than any other of their possessions.
⁶⁰
The expense of buying and equipping falcons naturally restricted this mounted sport to the aristocracy, as did the provision of proper accommodation, and the long hours required to train a hunting bird. The gift of hunting birds was much favoured by kings and nobles; it frequently occurred in practice and often features in medieval literature. Indeed, hawks and falcons were so highly regarded that they were sometimes used to pay ransoms.
⁶¹
The demand for good birds was constant in England and on the continent; prices were consequently high, and there was a profitable trade collecting and distributing falcons and hawks. Flanders, particularly the city of Bruges, was the main staging point.
⁶²
The Cely Letters
of 1478–79 show that George Cely, a Merchant of the Staple, was trading in hawks, and probably dogs and horses too, from Calais and Bruges. An abundant family correspondence gives us a rare and fascinating insight into the cross-Channel luxury trade in hunting birds during the later fifteenth century. In 1478, the Vicar of Watford wrote to George Cely ‘Ferthermore, I pray you to remembre [me] in thys seson for a goshawke or a tarsel. . . . Also I pray you to send me a bylle of your wellfare, and the prys . . . .'

In October 1478, Richard Cely the elder at London wrote to Richard Cely the younger at Calais:

Also youre gosehawke, the weche was delyuerd to my Lorde of Send Johnys, ys dede for defayte of good kepying, for the weche I wolde we hadde kepyt the hawke the weche Wyll Cely bravthe home and ys delyvered to the Vekery of Watforde.

A later letter to George, or perhaps Richard, Cely, Merchants of the Staple at Calais, instructed the purchase of another goshawk at the considerable price of 8 or 9
s
for Lord St John ‘yeff ye covd bey any at Callas for viij or ixs., and he would pay for the sayd hauke hemselffe for the pleser of my Lord'.
⁶³
On 12 October 1479, John Roosse at Calais wrote to George Cely at Bruges ‘that I scholde com to Breges to you for to helpe to conuey your haukys into England'. These birds would be conveyed via Calais. He mentions that ‘I bowte a mewd hauke in Callys syn I cam; sche coste me x/s. and more, the wysche I have sent into Eyngland'. Later that year, Robert Radclyff at Calais wrote to George Cely at Bruges enquiring about buying a ‘flecked spaniell' and a horse on his behalf;
⁶⁴
it seems likely that both these animals were also purchased for hawking.

Throughout Europe, legislation protected and preserved hawks and restricted hawking to the privileged élite. Penalties for disturbing eyries could be savage, including blinding the culprit.
⁶⁵
During Norman rule in England, the right to keep a hawk was restricted to the upper classes, but the Forest Charter of 1215 stated that every free man might have an eyrie (hawk's nest) in his own woods, from which he could lawfully take nestlings to train to hunt. A bird taken from the eyrie was termed an
eyass
, as opposed to a
haggard
, a hawk or falcon in mature plumage captured and reclaimed from the wild.
⁶⁶
Stealing a hawk was regarded as a felony in England and any person who destroyed raptor eggs was liable to a year's imprisonment. The Church apparently approved and sometimes imposed these laws, the Bishop of Ely going to the lengths of excommunicating a thief who stole a hawk from the cloisters of Bermondsey.
⁶⁷
Phillip Glasier must be referring to this incident in his classic
As the Falcon her Bells
when he recounts that ‘People took their hawks everywhere with them, even to church, and one bishop, hearing that his favourite falcon had been stolen from the cloisters while he was preaching his sermon, marched straight back into the pulpit and excommunicated the thief forthwith.'68

Like the quarry of hunters, birds of prey were classified by medieval writers. The basic division in the manuals is between
hawks of the tower
and
hawks of the fist
, which conveniently corresponds largely to the falcons (
Falconidae
) and the hawks (
Accipitridae
).
⁶⁹
The short-winged hawks were more popular with the French whereas the long-winged hawks, generically falcons, were more favoured in England. The latter birds include the peregrine, merlin and hobby, all of which were, and still are, used by falconers to fly at live quarry.
⁷⁰
Roy Modus
's division differs somewhat from the basic classification. He places the peregrine falcon, lanner, saker and hobby as hawks of the tower, whereas the goshawk, sparrow hawk, gyrfalcon and merlin are classed as hawks of the fist.
⁷¹
The hawks of the tower were unhooded and allowed to climb on thermals before stooping on the prey which had been put up by spaniels or pointers, then come in to the lure, whereas the hawks of the fist were trained to come to the fist only, not to the lure. Only short-winged hawks were trained in this manner, never falcons.
⁷²

Strictly, the term
falcon
refers specifically to the female peregrine but it is sometimes used in medieval and other sources for the females of other species of the
Falconidae
. Usually the species is named, such as the gyrfalcon. The
tiercel
,
tercel
,
tassel
or
tarcel
denotes the male peregrine, from the French word
tierce
, meaning ‘a third'. The male is a third less in size than the female. Again, this term is sometimes used incorrectly, referring to the males of other
Accipitridae
and
Falconidae
, although not all male birds of prey are a third less in size than their female counterparts.
⁷³

By the fourteenth century, authors of hawking texts were linking social status to raptor species, and there are references to every rank of the ruling classes having its own associated falcons, the distinctions becoming more refined as time passes. A passage in MS Egerton 1995 in the British Library shows this increasing trend ‘The namys of hawkys, and to what maner of Personys that they longe vnto euery man afyr hys owne degre and ordyr'.
⁷⁴
The
Boke of Saint Albans
, written in 1486, exemplifies the late medieval preoccupation with classification and division in the natural and human worlds, cataloguing and assigning particular birds of prey to persons of appropriate rank and status. The
Boke's
list reads:

Theys haukes belong to an Emproure

Theys be the names of all maner of hawkes . First an Egle .a Bawtere .a Melowne . The symplest of theis .iii. will flee an Hynde calfe .a Fawn .a Roo. a Kydde . an Elke . a Crane . a Bustarde a Storke. a Swan. a Fox in the playn grownde. And theis be not enlured . ne reclaymed . because that they be so ponderowse to the perch portatiff.. And theis .iii. by ther nature belong to an Emprowre .

Theis hawkes belong to a kyng .

Ther is a Gerfawken . A Tercell of a gerfauken . And theys belong to a Kyng .

ffor a prynce .

Ther is a Fawken gentill . and a Tercell gentill . and thys be for a prynce .

For a duke .

Ther is a Fawken of the rock . And that is for a duke

For an Erle .

Ther is a Fawken peregryne And that is for an Erle

ffor a Baron .

Also ther is a Bastarde and that hauke is for a Baron

Hawkes forr a knight

Ther is a Sacre and a Sacret . And theis be for a Knyght .

Hawkis for a Squyer .

Ther is a Lanare and a Lanrett . And theys belong to a Squyer .

For a lady

Ther is a Merlyon . And that hawke is for a lady

An hawke for a yongman

Ther is an Hoby . And that hauke is for a yong man And theys be
hawkes of the towre
: and ben both Ilurid to be calde and reclaymed

And yit ther be moo kyndis of hawkes

Ther is a Goshawke . and that hauke is for a yeman

Ther is a Tercell . And that is for a powere man .

Ther is a Spare hawke . and he is an hawke for a prest

Ther is a Muskyte . And he is for an holiwater clerke

And theis be of an oder maner kynde
. for thay flie to Querre and to fer Jutty and to Jutty fferry.
⁷⁵

The last sentence of the list specifying ‘moo kyndis of hawkes' refers to those birds known as
hawks of the fist
, mentioned in the classifications earlier, which were cast or flung (
jeter
) from the fist to strike (
férir
) the quarry. These birds of prey carried considerably less status than the
hawks of the tower
, as their terminal position in the list indicates.

It is significant that quarry species of animal were not classified in this hierarchical way and were never formally identified with corresponding human ranks in medieval society. The hawk or falcon is always identified with the human hunter, so an appropriate comparison between particular birds of prey and social ranks can be quite properly made. In contrast, wild beasts, whatever their individual ‘noble' attributes, always remain the quarry and are therefore in a subservient role to the hunter.