Read Online Medieval Hunting by Richard Almond - Free Book Online

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