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The hinds were held in the valley with hey! and ware!
The does driven with din to the depth of the dale,
Then the shimmering arrows slipped from the bowstring and slanted,
Winging their way from every tree in the wood,
Their broad heads piercing the bonny flanks of brown;
The deer brayed and bled, as on the banks they died.
-Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
An arowe of an elle longe,
In hys bowe he it throng
And to thr head he gave it hale;
‘There is no deere in this forest,
An it would on him feste,
But it should spill his shale.’
-The Kynge and the Hermit (14th century poem)
In the early Middle Ages, man was engaged in a battle with nature that has since resulted in a dubious victory, to carve a living space, to protect his crops and livestock from birds and animals as well as to provide meat for his table. This was a duty for the Saxon thegn.
However, hunting was by far the most popular diversion among the nobility and indeed some of the clergy throughout the middle ages, sometimes becoming an obsession occupying every moment of free time. Some women also participated in the less strenuous and dangerous forms of hunting. Hunters rose at dawn and set out on foot and on horseback with or without dogs and with such an array of spears, swords, and daggers as well as handbows and crossbows as to make hunting seem almost another kind of warfare. In fact it was considered a means of keeping in readiness for warfare, the true function of the noble. And it could be dangerous. Charlemagne was once badly gored in the thigh while trying to kill an aurochs with a sword from the back of a horse, and more than one nobleman failed to avoid the sharp slashing tusks of an enraged boar. There was also the danger of the arrows of other hunters as noted by the Count de Foix.
The two basic kinds of hunting were falconry
and venery, venery being further divided into the chase
and the hunt. It
is the hunt in which bows and arrows were used. These were not the only
hunting weapons. The usual form of hunting for the nobility was bow
and stable in which archers took up fixed positions while deer were
driven past them. However some bowmen ranged forests stalking their prey
and shot at view much like today’s bow hunters.
DE ARTE BERSANDI, written by Guicemas, a German knight, tells of the huntsman in the early Middle Ages. Huntsmen were well paid and might sometimes even be of knightly rank. A. huntsman’s duty was to bring venison to his lord’s board. He was to be adept in the use of both bow and crossbow as well as to be able to cut arrow shafts and make bow strings if necessary. He had to train his scent hound, a brachet, to seek out red or fallow deer, while ignoring roe deer and to follow a blood trail. He must know to sound the various horn signals, a series of short and long blasts similar to Morse code. He supervised his archers, men camouflaged in green tunics, hats and hoods. Each of them was to have a quiver with five arrows for the deer, and three darts [bodkins] for self defence in troubled times, or two flat headed arrows [blunts] for shooting birds.
Ideally, three archers and three horsemen accompanied the huntsman in the forest while the brachet ranged freely until deer were sighted. Then, the brachet leashed and carried on the crupper of one of the horses, the horsemen began to circle the deer on the downwind side. The archers, concealed by the horses, were assigned their places behind trees. The deer had learned to flee at the sight of a man but did not recognize a horse or even a horseman as a danger. The horsemen continued to circle until they came upwind of the deer, when they began to gradually move the deer toward the archers, careful not to cause panicked flight. Wounded deer that fled were tracked by the brachet.
A hunt was a favourite form of recreation for the king [or the baron] and his friends. The morning might begin with a picnic in the forest while The hunt began with the quest. Several huntsmen, each with a scent hound such as a lymer, set out to locate the deer, leaving a trail of broken small branches for the archers to follow. They estimated the size of the deer from the tracks and droppings, some of which he gathered in his hunting horn to show his lord who would decide if it were worth hunting that day. In the great royal bow and stable hunts, archers on foot commonly shot from behind a blind or tree situated on a game trail. The yeoman of the king’s bows had the duty of preparing the royal blind and occupying it until the arrival of the king, to whom all deer in the kingdom belonged. The green clad archers would then wait motionless at their chosen trees with arrows half drawn until the game was driven past them by huntsmen advancing on foot with pairs of lymers to drive the deer toward the hunting party. Deer wounded but fled would be tracked by the archer with his bloodhound. Wounded game was finished off with a hunting knife. Then the belly was slit open and the organs removed. These were the portion of the huntsman. The meat was then divided and the dogs permitted to feast on bread thrown in the bloody abdominal cavity.
Ladies were sometimes provided a comfortable and convenient place to shoot from at deer driven into nets or other enclosures where they could be shot at leisure.
Hunts became much more elaborate after the Crusades began. Like the Saracens, many Europeans came to rely on packs of hounds to pursue and even kill the quarry, and falconry was introduced into Europe as well. In England, where nearly every man and many women were skilled with the bow, archery retained more popularity than on the continent.
For many kings, hunting was an overriding passion and they established royal forests and game parks to make it more enjoyable. The Ardennes was originally established as Charlemagne’s hunting preserve with foresters posted to guard the entrance trail. He was particularly fond of hunting in his youth and hunted deer, boar and wild ox with javelin and with small bow and short or long arrows.
Alfred the Great before he was twelve was a most expert and active hunter and excelled in all branches of that most noble art, to which he applied with incessant labour and amazing success. Even Edward the Confessor whose temperament seemed more that of a churchman than of a king, loved to follow a pack of swift hounds in pursuit of game and to cheer them with his voice. His successor Harold Godwinson, rarely travelled without his hawks and hounds.
The Anglo-Saxon chronicle informs us that William the Conqueror made large forests for deer and enacted laws therewith, so that whoever killed a hart or hind would be blinded. As he forbade killing the deer, so also the boars. And he loved the tall stags as if he were their father. He also appointed concerning the hares that they should go free. A rhyme described his harshness;
‘He made great protection for the game
And imposed laws for the same,
That who so slew hart or hind
Should be made blind.’
William established the New Forest, comprising some tens of thousands of acres from which area many Saxons were forcibly evacuated. Some habitations were permitted in the royal forests, but those who lived in them, though allowed to carry bows and blunts, were forbidden to carry arrows with sharp steel arrowheads. Though they could gather dead branches for firewood, they were forbidden to take living branches or wood. Their pigs or cattle were not to graze when the deer were fawning, and their dogs had to have the three claws in their forepaws clipped so that they could not run after game.
William’s son William Rufus, known as Redbeard, was killed in the new Forest under mysterious circumstances by an arrow supposedly shot by one Wat Tyrell, a nobleman visiting from France. Some interpreted his death as divine retribution for the means by which his father had established the New Forest. Rufus’ cousin Richard was also killed by an arrow by one of his knights while hunting. This didn’t stop Henry I, another of William’s sons, from constructing a park at Woodstock walled about with stone, seven miles in compass, and, placed therein, besides great store of deer, divers strange beasts, such as lions, linces, porpentines and such other. The presence of exotic animals in mediaeval hunting stories does not necessarily mean that the stories are fantasy. The royal court was situated at Woodstock in the early fourteenth century. Both Henry ll and his nemesis Thomas a Becket were enthusiastic hunters. Thomas a Becket visited Paris in 1157 with grooms and hawkers with hounds and gerfalcons in his extensive baggage train. Some felt that hunting was not for the clergy. Hunting, hawking or dicing were forbidden to priests during the reign of King Edward. However Henry II an avid hunter himself, relaxed the game laws, permitting an archbishop, bishop, earl or baron to kill one or two deer in the sight of a forester if one was present. If not, it was required to have a horn sounded to be free of suspicion of poaching. John Kirkby, the fighting Bishop of Carlisle poached a royal doe from Sherwood Forest but was pardoned, perhaps because of prior military service against the Scots. Edward III, even on his military campaigns in France, brought his hunting staff with him and went hunting every day that he could.
The NIBELUNGENLIED, written in the early thirteenth century, describes Siegfried's last hunt in the Wasken woods and illustrates the sumptuous pleasure of the hunt for the nobility. 'It was a royal hunt for boar, bear and bison with spears. They arose early and loaded their hunting gear on pack horses for they meant to cross the Rhine. The horses also carried bread, mead and spiced wine, meats and fish and other provisions. They made camp on a broad island at the edge of the green forest near the place where the game could be started. On this occasion rather than choose a leader, they divided men and hounds and hunted separately. Siegfried took one huntsman with a tracking dog to lead him to the game. Siegfried, on horseback, killed such game as the hound flushed with sword or with sharp arrows. After he felled them they put the hound on its leash. He killed bison, elk, auerochs, shelk, and boar and bear. One loud blast of the horn signalled for the return to camp. This blast was answered by the huntsmen.
‘How splendidly he rode to camp! His spear was large, sturdy, and broad. A fine sword hung down to his spurs, and he carried a handsome horn of red gold. I never heard tell of better hunting gear. He wore a cloak of black pfellel silk and a hat of rich sable. Oh, what costly borders he had upon his quiver! A panther’s skin formed its covering for the sake of the sweet fragrance. And he carried a bow which no one could bend but himself except with a windlass. His hunting garb was all of otter (ludern) skin, with inserts of other-colored furs from head to toe, and from the shining fur there gleamed on either side many a golden clasp. He carried Balmung, a broad and handsome sword. So sharp were its cutting edges that it never failed when wielded against a helmet. The splendid hunter was proud and gay. Since I must tell you everything, to the smallest detail- his precious quiver was full of good arrows, the heads mounted in gold and at least a hand’s breadth wide. Whatever he pierced with them was soon doomed to die.
So the knight rode along in hunter’s fashion.'
Not everyone found hunting a sport of unalloyed delight and nobility. John of Salisbury, a 12th century critic of hunting, wrote: 'In our time, hunting and hawking are esteemed the most honourable employments, and most excellent virtues, by our nobility; and they think it the height of worldly felicity to spend the whole of their time in these diversions; accordingly they prepare for them with more solicitude, expense, and parade, than they do for war; and pursue the wild beasts with greater fury than they do the enemies of their country. By constantly following this way of life, they lose much of their humanity and become as savage, nearly, as the very brutes they hunt. Husbandmen, with their harmless herds and flocks, are driven from their well cultivated fields, their meadows, and their pastures, that wild beasts may range in them without interruption. If one of these great and merciless hunters shall pass by your habitation, bring forth hastily all the refreshment you have in your house, or that you can readily buy, or borrow from your neighbor; that you may not be involved in ruin, or even accused of treason.” By the thirteenth century, there were dozens of royal forests in England. Verderers were assigned to take care of the vegetation, ensuring that no one cut the timber, branches or undergrowth that gave the animals shelter, while foresters were to protect the game, apprehending poachers.
Henry I employed four huntsmen as well as four horn blowers, 20 sergeants[beaters], several assistant huntsmen, a variety of dog handlers, a troop of mounted wolf hunters, and several archers, one of whom was also the king’s bow bearer.
Henry II was unusually obsessed with hunting. He was careless about his clothing except for his fine ruby scarlet and Lincoln green hunting clothes adorned with jewelled brooches at throat and shoulder and a richly ornamented belt buckle. At the age of forty-four, bows, swords, hunting spears and arrows were always in his hands unless he was in council or at his books, and in his frequent travels about his kingdom, hunting played a large part.
His hunting staff was like a small army. It included hornblowers, fewterers (who slipped the hounds) leading the greyhounds and the lime-hounds and the brachets; the berners, who fed the hounds; the wolf hunters with their twenty-four running hounds and eight greyhounds; the archers; the chief huntsman and his knights and the twenty sergeants of the hunt and a host of underlings.
These men wore clothing of Lincoln or Kendal green (so named from their places of manufacture), or of russet brown to match the woods according to the season. Caped hoods were a traditional part of hunting clothing. Also traditional was the hunting horn for signalling the dogs or other hunters. Various calls were used such as recheat, three short blasts for assembly of the hounds. In the ballads, Robin Hood uses this signal to summon his outlaws when he needs their help. The horns were usually of cowhorn, but sometimes of elephant tusk, often beautifully carved, called Oliphants. The horns were fitted with metal bands, sometimes of gold, and hung low from a baldric crossing the body.
Dogs were provided with collars to which a ring was attached. The fewterer had a length of line, one end of which was tied to his upper arm. The other end of the line was passed through the rings in the collars of one or several dogs and held in the hand. The dogs were let slip simply by releasing the end of the line. Two dogs on the line are called a brace, three are a leash.
Various breeds of dogs were used. Sight or gaze hounds, and scent hounds. The most important were greyhound or levrier, the lymer, and the brachet. The greyhound runs mute and follows game by sight rather than scent. Greyhounds, larger than those in our time, were trained in two ways; to simply pursue the game, or to kill. The lymer, or lime-hound, was a bloodhound kept on a leash and used to locate game, to follow a wounded animal, or to finish a wounded stag at bay. The brachet was a long eared scent hound, supposedly the ancestor of the modern pointer and was similar to the braque, which is still bred in Portugal. The alaunt was a large fierce dog, similar to a German shepherd, usually used in boar hunts.
A lone archer could use a lymer to track a deer and keep it at bay until he could shoot it. Archers in groups usually waited for the deer to be driven past by huntsmen and dogs. Occasionally ladies joined in this sport, which could be simplified for them by driving the deer into a paddock or net enclosure where they could be shot at leisure.
Even the spaniel imported from Spain was used in deer hunting in England in Elizabethan times. A wounded deer will frequently attempt to make its escape in the water. Trained spaniels were employed to get them back on land.
Venery consisted of the chase, in which the game was pursued, usually with dogs, and the hunt, that included bowhunting. The favoured game animal was the deer, both for sport and meat. Three species of deer were hunted; the red deer, the fallow deer and the roe deer.
The preferred red deer were the largest and most preferred, rather larger than they are today when their range and food supply in the forests has been reduced. The great stags of Europe were red deer. Their summer coat is reddish brown, becoming brownish grey in the winter. The female is called a hind. The male is named according to the development of its tined antlers. A calf a few months old is called a knobbe, the second year a brocket (spike buck), the third year a spayad, the fourth a staggard and the fifth year a hart. In the sixth year it becomes a stag. The Hart of ten, with antlers of ten tines, was considered the worthy quarry.
The fallow deer are not native to northern Europe, but were introduced to England from the Mediterranean area, perhaps as early as Roman times. This deer is a smaller species than the red deer. The summer coat is a reddish fawn with white spots and a white line along the flanks. The winter coat is darker and the spots disappear. The female is called a doe. The male is named according to the development of its palmate antlers in a mediaeval poem of Sir Tristram
The second yeere, a Pricket
The third yeere, a Sorell
The fourth yeere, a Sore The fifth yeere, a Bucke of the first head.
The sixth yeere, a Bucke or a great Bucke.
In the Middle Ages, people took their animals seriously. For only two species of deer we have here fourteen distinct names familiar to any mediaeval man considered a gentleman. These should help clarify various references in old writings on hunting.
The smallest species was the roe deer. In eighteenth and nineteenth century Britain these were almost extinct except in the Scottish highlands. The summer coat is short and bright fox red, the winter coat a dark speckled greyish fawn with a conspicuous white tail patch. The female is called a roe, the male a roebuck and the young are called kids. The meat of all species was called venison.
Another animal favoured for meat and more dangerous sport was the boar. These animals have a coat of greyish hair and large sharp curved tusks which they use for digging roots that they eat. The tusks are also capable to disembowel an unwary hunter. Much hunting was done with bait, nets, fences, traps and especially dogs and with spears or swords as weapons. We will deal here with the use of archery in hunting. Both handbows and crossbows were used in hunting, and the many illustrations in Le Livre de Chasse mostly show crossbows. As firearms came into general use, skill with the handbow diminished and the easier crossbow came more into popularity. It was in England that the longbow remained longest in use, except for isolated areas like Scotland or Lapland. In the sixteenth century, Thomas Elyot wrote of longbowmen; ...for being industrious they killed their game further from them (if’ they shot a great strength) than they can with a crossbow, except it be of such a weight that the arm will repent the bearing thereof twenty years after. Crossbows were also noisier than handbows. When steel crossbows became general for military purposes, those of composite construction continued to be used by sportsmen.
Large game was hunted with broadheads and with angell-hedes, the angle of barbs of which was 90 degrees. Heads of these types; up to four fingers wide, are both described and pictured in LE LIVRE DE CHASSE. There were also chisel shaped heads on crossbow shafts for hamstringing game. The forked heads had still another purpose. For geese or other large birds they should be double forked, sharp, and strong, to cut a wing or neck clean off. A hit with a broadhead cannot be depended on to immediately bring down a strong flyer like a large goose for notwithstanding she be hurt or shot through, she will fly off and die in another place.
Small game such as hares, squirrels and birds was hunted using less powerful bows called birding bows used with blunt arrows or bolts. A book of 1697 states that; Many must go together to hunt them and must carry dogs with them. The squirrels take refuge in trees, and ...since it is too troublesome to climb every tree, that labour must be supplied with Bows and Bolts, that when the squirrel resteth, presently he may be thumpt with the blow of an arrow; the Archer need not fear to do her much harm, except he hit her on the head; for by reason of a strong back-bone and fleshy parts, she will abide as great a stroak as a dog. Hares might be flushed by greyhounds and shot with blunt arrows. Burders and fowlers aided farmers by catching birds of prey with falcon nets or disposing of smaller seed eating birds with crossbows.
The MENAGIER DE PARIS advises ladies wishing to stock the larder with birds to use falconry in conjunction with archery. For this purpose you may carry a bow and bolt in order that, when the blackbird takes shelter in a bush and does not quit it for the hawk which hovers over and watches it, the lady or damsel who knows how to shoot may kill it with the bolt.
Birds were also commonly hunted with stonebows or stone casting crossbows called rodds. These weapons could shoot stones with great accuracy and rodds were equipped with sights. The hunters mark was the eye of the woodcock or other bird. In Shakespeare’s TWELFTH NIGHT Sir Toby cries, ’Oh, for a stone bow, to hit him in the eye.’ Hunters could get close to waterfowl using a stalking horse, recommended by Markham. Birds or animals that would take flight at the sight of a man, see no danger in a slowly moving horse, an old Jade trayned up for that use which will gently walke up and downe in the water; and then you shall shelter yourself and your Peice behind his fore shoulder. Lacking a horse the hunter could take pieces of oulde canvasse, and having made it in the shape or proportion of a Horse, let it be painted as neare the colour of a Horse as you can devise. Similar pictures or dummies were used in hunting deer, and are pictured in LIVRE DE CHASSE.
When an archer went seeking the game and shot on sight, this was called shooting at view. In addition to the camouflage offered by green or brown clothing, hunters used branches and leaves to conceal themselves, sometimes holding branches in their mouths to break up the telltale glare of the face. The hunter took up his position in a tree when hunting boar at a wallow. Hunters sometimes rode horses and shot from the saddle.
Gaston de Foix remained the standard authority on the hunt during the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. However since his book is largely derived from the earlier book of ROI MODUS, we will simply reproduce the bowhunting section of the latter in its entirety. The author's specifications for bow and arrows may be found in Book 1-The Guilds (While, due to copyright considerations, I am not free to include this section here, the reader can read it at ARCHERYLIBRARY.COM. The book is THE BOOK OF ARCHERY, the chapter is V FRENCH ARCHERY and the paragraph is THE BOOK OF ROI MODUS).
Hares and coneys (rabbits) were the most popular small game hunted with blunt arrows or bolts or with hounds. Hunting seasons covered nearly the entire year except for ‘Fencer Month’, from two weeks before Midsummer Day to two weeks after during which time no game might be killed. The seasons, like many events in mediaeval times, were marked by the religious calendar.
Hart and Buck - - ,Nativity of St. John the Baptist (June 24) to Holy-rood Day (Sept.14) or end of Fencer month (July 8) to Holyrood Day
Hind and Doe- -Holyrood Day to Candlemas (Feb.2)
Roebuck- - Easter to Michaelmas (Sept 29)
Roe- - Michaelmas to Candlemas
Boar- - Nativity of Our Lady (Sept 8) to Candlemas
Hare- - Michaelmas to Candlemas
Coney- - all seasons
Before its extinction during the Middle Ages the Aurochs was the largest and most dangerous game animal native to continental Europe. This was a wild ox whose great horns made the largest drinking horns. There was also a European Bison.
Wolves and foxes were hunted for sport, hides and for population control or extermination which latter was sadly successful in most parts of Europe. Although William the Bastard set a penalty of blinding for anyone who killed a deer or boar in his vast deer preserve, rights of ‘warren’ were often granted to kill foxes, hares, the grey or badger of whose skins bolt quivers were made, squirrels, wild cats, martens and otter, that he considered pests.
Most kinds of birds were hunted. Swans, herons and storks as well as geese and ducks. Archers would use blunt arrowheads or stonebows to avoid unduly tearing up the game, or forked heads to cut off a wing of a flying goose or swan. Among the smaller birds, partridge, quail, woodcock, doves, crows, blackbirds and larks. All these kinds of birds were not only hunted, but also eaten, even by nobles. In Italy the custom of eating songbirds continues, much to the disgust of many bird lovers in northern Europe who find bird songs diminishing as more and more birds that fly south for the winter do not return each year.
Some men were professional hunters. Ordinarily they were interested in the fur, especially in the northern regions of Scandinavia and Russia, and the fur was traded to all parts of Europe. Not as much fur was used in the Middle Ages as popularly supposed, and its use was regulated by law. For common people, only lamb, hare and fox were permitted. This was usually used in hoods and mittens. Barons were permitted vair, grey, sable and ermine. Vair was made from the skins of northern arboreal squirrels, the upper bluish grey fur, called grey or gris, and the white underbelly also called vair, cut separately and sewn together to form the patterns of vair and countervair, familiar to students of heraldry. Vair was used in the linings of mantles and surcotes and on caps.
Finns or Lapps were the major suppliers of the skins of these squirrels which they hunted with blunt arrows for meat as well as fur. Marten was used in royal sable mantles.
In addition to the pleasures of the hunt, the nobleman {and the outlaw} also took much pleasure in dining on the game he bagged, even including heron, crow and all manner of small birds as well as hares. But venison was the favorite repast. In 1429 the coronation feast of Henry VII included venyson rosted and frument with venyson. In 1458 Froissart attended a great feast in seven courses for the King of France and his court. The feast was given by our old friend Gaston, Count de Foix and Prince de Viane and as we might expect, enormous quantities of game and poultry were featured. Some recipes of the period {some prepared in the kitchens of Richard ll} that we would not be surprised to find on the table were as follows.
Venison or beef steak
'Take venison or beef and slice and grill it up brown. Then take vinegar and a little verjuice and a little wine, and put powdered pepper thereon enough and powdered ginger. And at the dresser strew on powdered cinnamon enough, that the steaks may be all covered therewith and but a little sauce. And then serve it forth.' Mediaeval recipes give the ingredients but don’t tell how much of each to use. One has to work it out to ones own tastes. Verjuice was the juice of such sour fruits as crab apples, green grapes or gooseberries, sometimes fermented, used in preparing meat, fish and eggs. The dresser referred to was the serving table on which the food was placed by the kitchen staff to be picked up by the service personnel. Venison was commonly served with frument or frumenty, a dish resembling cream of wheat or grits.
Frumenty
'Take wheat picked clean, hulled, winnowed and washed. Then boiled until it bursts, beaten up with milk, mixed with yolks of eggs, heated but not burned, coloured with saffron, seasoned with sugar and salt and served.' Frumenty may be prepared from cracked wheat [Bulgur wheat], available at stores that stock grains.
Venison in a pasty
The venison pasties so loved by Friar Tuck were made as follows, similar to Scottish Forfar Bridies.
Take haunches of venison, parboil it in fair water and salt. Then take fair paste and lay thereon the venison cut in pieces as thou wilt have it and cast under it and above it powder of ginger, or pepper and salt mixed together. And set them in an oven and let them bake til they be enough. Parboiling should be at barely a simmer, to prevent too much loss of juices which should be kept for later use. The 'fair paste' is pastry dough rolled into a disc. After laying on the contents it is folded double, the edges dampened and pressed together to seal. This should be pierced with a knife to allow steam to escape. A half hour in a hot oven should be enough baking. Both fresh and salt venison, highly seasoned with pepper and ginger was put into pasties, which were made to be eaten hot or were filled up on cooling with clarified butter for a cold bakement.
A 15th century recipe from the Harleian MS is for a venison pie much like the venison pasty above.
Venyson Y-bake
Take hoghes of Venyson, & parboyle hem in fayre Water an Salt; & whan the Fleyssche is fayre y-boylid, make fayre past, & caste thin Venison ther-on; & caste a-boue an be-nethe, pouder Pepir, Gyngere, & Salt, & than sette it on the ouyn, & lat bake, & serue forth. This time venison shanks, parboiled in salted water, are cut up, placed on a disc of dough and spiced with a mixture of pepper, salt, and ginger. It is not clear if the venison is to be covered with more dough or perhaps formed into a pasty. It is then baked in the oven until the crust is lightly browned.
Sometimes deer, after being hung for several days were roasted whole on a spit. Basting was done with butter, oil, fine suet rendered up with cinnamon or simple salt and water. The roast venison was eaten with a strong pepper and vinegar sauce (poivrade or peverade) or salt and cinnamon, or powdered ginger. An Elizabethan sauce was composed of vinegar, sugar, cinnamon and butter boiled together. It should not be too tart. Freshly killed deer were sometimes immediately salted for preservation and either fresh or preserved venison might be used in these recipes.
Roast venison with pepper sauce
Venison was also made into a soup.
Take flesh of boar or roe-buck; parboil it in small pieces, seethe it well in half water and half wine. Take bread and grind it with the same broth and add blood. Let it seethe together with Powder-fort [strong powder] of ginger or of cinnamon and mace with a great proportion of vinegar and currants. This is really more of a stew than a broth.
Venison could also be boiled, with parsley, sage, ground pepper, cloves, mace, vinegar and a little red wine.
Noumbles
There really was such a thing as humble pie. The noumbles, or humbles, the organ meats like kidneys, heart etc., traditionally allotted to the huntsman and served by Robin Hood to his guests, were prepared as follows:
Ballads inform us that Robin Hood served noumbles to his guests. 'Take noumbles of Deer or of other beest; parboyle hem; kerf hem to dyce. Take the self broth or better; take brede and grynde with the broth and temper it up with a good quantity of vinegar and wyne. Take the onyons and parboyle hem, and mynce hem smale and do ther-to. Color it with blode and do ther-to powdor fort and salt, boyle it wele, and serve it forth.' One form of powder fort would be ginger, mace and pepper ground together.
Humble Pie
Favorite accompaniments for these dishes were white bread, red wine and brown ale. Blood was sometimes used to colour food black when different coloured dishes were served at a feast.
Pork Loin in Boar’s Tail Sauce
Wild boar, though not as much loved as venison, was a favorite meat especially when in season in late fall. Here is a recipe from Paris.
First put the loin in boiling water, then take it out and stick it all over with cloves. Set it to roast, basting it with a sauce made from spices: that is, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, grains, long pepper, and nutmeg, moistened with verjuice, wine, and vinegar: and baste with this without first boiling it. And when the roast is done, boil it together. This sauce might also be thickened with breadcrumbs.
The delights of the hunt were difficult to resist for many Englishmen, all of whom had longbows and knew how to use them, and for the forest outlaws, in trouble with the law in any case, they were a necessary means of survival. Of course arrows with steel broadheads were not permitted to commoners within the royal forests although blunt arrows were not prohibited. Arkes et setes hors de.foreste, et en foreste ark et piles.
The poacher, like the nobleman, preferred venison. Since his risk was considerable in any case; he might as well go for the best. Such deer as wandered beyond the pale, outside the confines of the doubtful sanctuary of game parks, were fair game, but many men didn’t care to wait for them to come out, and with their faces blackened with charcoal or clenching branches between their teeth, went in after them. Poachers were armed with handbows or arbalests for the game, and whatever other weapons they deemed necessary for the foresters. Some used hounds. Scotland’s forest laws, the ‘Leges Forestarium', required that ‘a man following his dog into the king's forest must divest himself of bows and arrows or bind them with his bowstring. Swineherds were permitted entry to get acorns but their dogs had to be lawed, their claws cut off to the skin.
Some bands of outlaws, as in the ballads of Robin Hood or Adam Bell, who faced death in any case if caught, simply lived in the royal forests and took such deer as they wanted. Outlawry meant being deprived of any legal protection so that anything done to an outlaw had no legal penalty.
When a poacher was caught, penalties could be severe. Cnut, England’s Danish king, permitted every freeman to hunt on his own lands but poaching in the royal forests was severely punished. For a first offence a freeman lost his liberty, and a villein his right hand. Being caught a second time was likely to mean death. Some poachers were killed out of hand when caught in the act. An under-keeper to Thomas, second Lord of Berkeley slew one Clift stealing deer, with a forker out of his crossbow. Another of Thomas’ servants found a man netting hares in his master’s wood and killed him with an arrow. It was perhaps because of poachers that Smythe’s game keeper promised to always have in readiness one able bow of yew and a sheaf of arrows, with a bracer and shooting glove, a sword and a dagger.
In his Forest Charter, Henry II relaxed the severity of these punishments, rescinding those depriving the poacher of life and limb. However, if caught in the act he would be subject to a heavy fine; and in default of payment be imprisoned for a year and a day, after which he should find surety for his future behavior or be banished from the land.
As is usual in instances in which punishments are terribly severe but convictions are few, poaching continued. In the general disorder of the reign of Henry VII, Robin Hood bands with masked or blackened faces were killing the king's deer with impunity, with none to say them nay.
Apprehending poachers in the royal forests was the duty of the green-clad foresters, some mounted, who patrolled the royal forests armed with quarter staves, swords, bows and arrows. Foresters served under wardens and the chief forester would be resident at the nearest castle. Few ballads are sympathetic to foresters. At best they are portrayed as just doing their job, at worst as arrogant bloodthirsty bullies and were known for extortion and other infringements of the law, including poaching. Local villagers tended to favor the poachers. They saw nothing, heard nothing, and failed to raise the hue and cry required by law.
Forests granted to barons were not under royal forest law and less severe punishments were specified. The baron’s foresters could arrest poachers when caught in the act.
Dog draw
Stable stand
Back berond
Bloody hand
This old rhyme lists conditions under which a man in a hunting preserve would be considered a poacher. They are; pursuing a deer with a dog; being settled to shoot, carrying a deer on his back, and being caught ‘red-handed.' The malefactor would be held in prison until a fine was paid to the baron.
In the Scottish ballad of Johny Cock, the gentlemanly poacher is told:
There are seven forsters at Pickeram Side,
At Pickeram where they dwell,
And for a drop of thy hearts bluid,
They wad ride the fords of hell.
Johny is later attacked by them as he lies sleeping with his dogs beside his kill. In ROBIN HOOD’S PROGRESS TO NOTTINGHAM there is another conflict:
Robin Hood he would to fair Nottingham
With the general for to dine,
There he was ware of fifteen forresters,
And a drinking beer, ale and wine.
Their insolent baiting of young Robin results in their being slain by Robin’s broad arrows.
The foresters’ job could be dangerous. In May of 1246, in Brockingham Forest near Beanfield, the newly green foliage provided concealment as well as springtime delight. William, Roger and Matthew, foresters, lay in wait. Word had come to their ears of poachers in the vicinity with greyhounds come to slay the king’s deer and at last their vigil was rewarded as five hunting greyhounds came into view. The foresters caught four of them but the fifth, a tawny one, escaped. After taking the greyhounds the foresters returned to the forest and again lay in ambush. This time they saw the tawny greyhound again and they saw five poachers in the lord king’s demene of Wydehawe, one with a crossbow and four with bows and arrows, standing at their trees. And when the foresters perceived them, they hailed and pursued them.
The records of the court continue; And the aforesaid rnalefactors, standing at their trees, turned in defense and shot arrows at the foresters so that they wounded Matthew, the forester of the park of Brigstock, with two Welsh arrows, to wit with one arrow under the left breast, to the depth of one hand slantwise, and with the second arrow in the left arm to the depth of two fingers, so that it was despaired of the life of the said Matthew.
The foresters continued pursuit of the
poachers who turned and fled into the depths of the forest a
nd, as night
fell, made good their escape. Matthew died of his wounds but the
poachers were never taken.
There was little mercy for a poacher. Still, if preparations for war were afoot, a poacher or an outlaw might get a pardon, even for murder, in return for military service.