More specifically, into the forest, which in the Middle Ages was not necessarily the same thing. The concept of forest referred to a game preserve and was famously introduced into England by the Normans. (No Trees in the Forest gives a succinct account of the vocabulary of English forests). The notion of a forest brings with it a notion of limited rights to pasturage, timber, and hunting. Those rights were usually reserved to kings or their grantees, and there are many references to offences against either the vert (plant resources) or venison (game) in mediaeval law codes.

Both mediaeval sources and modern historians sometimes give the impression that forest law was capriciously imposed by royal whim to the detriment of the countryside, but this was not necessarily the case. When populations are small and woodlands are large, human impact on the area is likely to be minimal and need for regulation will be low. However, when populations of humans and livestock increase, as happened in the course of Middle Ages, the threat to woodlands becomes very real. Clear-cutting and overgrazing, with the subsequent environmental damage, destroyed resources valuable to the human community -- timber for building, herbage and forage for cattle, acorns and beech mast for swine. Mediaeval forest law was as much aimed at preserving the natural resources of an area, including wildlife and wildlife habitat, as with providing for royal recreation.

In addition to forests, mediaeval hunters might be bounded by warrens and purlieus. While in modern parlance the term 'warren' refers to a colony of rabbits or a complex of their burrows, in the Middle Ages the term was applied more broadly to an area set aside for small game. In fact the word derives from an Old French word which means simply 'enclosure.' The right of free warren, to hunt over such a piece of land, was a franchise usually granted separately from any other rights. The 'beasts of free warren' in England were usually rabbits, hare, partridges, and pheasants -- animals which could be taken by a large hawk (Sheail 35).

Purlieus were areas outside a forest where game was protected, that is, areas in which the king exercised forest rights although he did not hold the land directly. Their existence in England dates from the thirteenth century, and in English law the term refers specifically to land disafforested in Henry III's Charter of the Forest of 1217, which was regarded as remedying some of the abusive afforestations made under Richard I and John. In these cases, the disafforestation was not absolute; the holder of the land had hunting rights on it, but no one else, with the exception of the king, and game was still protected. Indirect evidence for the existence of purlieus in Scotland can be found from the twelfth century on; two thirteenth-century Scottish forest laws specify that certain people may hunt from their own land into the forest, with an implication that while some were allowed to hunt on land they held beside a forest, others were not (Gilbert 102).

Given that the right to hunt was so limited, much of the independent hunting (and fishing) done by peasants would have been considered poaching. A brief survey of popular histories leaves one with the notion that poaching was a capital offence in mediaeval Europe -- an idea allowed by most writers to linger as "evidence" of the inhumane and inegalitarian nature of mediaeval society. The most frequently cited example of the terrible severity of forest laws comes from The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, speaking of William the Conqueror in 1087:

He was fallen into covetousness, and greediness he loved withal. He made many deer-parks; and he established laws therewith; so that whosoever slew a hart, or a hind, should be deprived of his eyesight. As he forbade men to kill the harts, so also the boars; and he loved the tall deer as if he were their father. Likewise he decreed by the hares, that they should go free. His rich men bemoaned it, and the poor men shuddered at it. But he was so stern, that he recked not the hatred of them all; for they must follow withal the king's will, if they would live, or have land, or possessions, or even his peace.

Most of us would accept that blinding is a severe punishment for many crimes, but to leave the discussion with The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle would be misguided. First, the Chronicle was hardly a pro-Conqueror account; one must expect a certain bias and perhaps even exaggeration. Also, English forest law was limited to England, and not in effect elsewhere in Europe. As a contrast, the thirteenth-century northern German Sachsenspiegel provides that no man might be maimed or killed for poaching.(Coulton, 117). Furthermore, penalties for poaching on seigneurial lands were usually considerably less than those for poaching on royal lands, even in England. In fourteenth-century Wakefield, the penalty for killing a deer was 20s -- quite a contrast from the promised blindings reported by The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Hanawalt, Ties 117), or even the £10 fine for poaching pheasants and partridges on royal land which is decreed in an English statute of 1495. (Coulton 118n; £10 was nearly twice the annual wage of a country labourer).

It would also be misguided to assume that commoners were absolutely and at all times forbidden to hunt at all. Local customs might allow peasants to hunt certain game at particular times of year, or under certain conditions -- if the chase were started on common land, for example. The prosperous might even lease hunting rights. In 1432, Maxstoke Priory, in the forest of Arden, leased rights to hunt small game in some of its woodlands, allowing the lessee to take pheasants, partridges, woodcock and wild duck between Christmas and Easter, and in 1499, Merevale Abbey, also in Arden, leased two of its warrens for £14 and £16, respectively. (Watkins, 94-95).

Nevertheless, poaching was a significant aspect of mediaeval hunting, and it was not limited to commoners. Noblemen and churchmen did their share of illicit hunting (see The Poaching Priors of Blythburgh for a brief account of the illegal activities of some men of the cloth). Hunting, legally or not, was also a high-status activity, and social climbing is hardly a modern phenomenon. A black market in poached game might also make hunting illegally a lucrative enough occupation to make it worth the risk.

Furthermore, especially in the early Middle Ages, hunting (and poaching) was a matter of survival in rural communities. One comes away from the opening books of Duby's Rural Economy and Country Life in the Medieval West with a powerful sense of just how tenuous the life of the common villager was, how one disaster of weather or soil fertility would be enough to wipe out an entire community if no supplemental means of getting food was employed. The choice between possibly facing repercussions for poaching or starving outright is hardly a choice.

Coming Soon: Part Two: Nets, Snares, and Arrows

Return to the Kennels

Updated 21 August 2004