Reassessing the Rationale and Ritual of Hunting in the Changing Natural World of Post-Restoration England

Abstract

In the sixteenth century, deer hunting was the most prestigious type of hunting. The monarchy and the aristocracy spent large amounts of time and money to pursue this slow, ritualistic hunt that could be considered akin to a court masque in its script and symbolic demonstrations. It was also a chance for members of the court to distinguish themselves as brave and noble, and thus fit to rule or govern their respective territories. By the eighteenth century, deer hunting was no longer the most popular or prestigious hunt. The fox had become the premier prey, a distinction that it maintained even into the twentieth century. Most of the scholarship on this transition glosses over the seventeenth century and indicates that the transition can be simply explained by the changing landscape of the English countryside. This is an overly simplistic explanation. This paper will examine sporting and social concerns to explore what else could have encouraged the movement away from deer to fox. The wealth, status and social demonstrations that deer hunting provided were transferred to fox hunting. The fox hunt was also faster and more chaotic, which coincided with the general movement away from staid, performative court rituals. The growing popularity of racing also helped encourage the breeding of horses with improved speed-endurance qualities, which could be used for both hunting and racing.

Notes

1 Emma Griffin, Blood Sport: Hunting in Britain since 1066 (New Haven, 2007), p. 124; Jonah Stuart Brundage, ‘The Pacification of Elite Lifestyles: State Formation, Elite Reproduction, and the Practice of Hunting in Early Modern England’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 59-4 (2017), pp. 786-817, p. 796.

2 Roger Longrigg, The History of Foxhunting (New York, 1975), p. 42.

3 Raymond Carr, English Fox Hunting: A History (London, 1976), p. 17.

4 Griffin, Blood Sport: Hunting in Britain since 1066, p. 100; Carr, English Fox Hunting, p. 23.

5 Mandy De Belin, From the Deer to the Fox: The Hunting Transition and the Landscape, 1600–1850 (Hatfield, 2013), p. 2.

6 Carr, English Fox Hunting, p. 23.

7 Carr, English Fox Hunting, p. 23.

8 Griffin, Blood Sport: Hunting in Britain since 1066, p. 105; E. P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the Black Act (New York, 1978), p. 36.

9 Peter Edwards, ‘Horses and Elite Identity in Early Modern England: The Case of Sir Richard Newdigate II of Arbury Hall, Warwickshire (1644–1710)’, in Pia F. Cuneo (ed.), Animals and Early Modern Identity (Farnham, 2014), pp. 131-48, pp. 141-2.

10 Iris M. Middleton, ‘The Origins of English Fox Hunting and the Myth of Hugo Meynell and the Quorn’, Sport in History 25-1 (2005), pp. 1-16; Brundage, ‘The Pacification of Elite Lifestyles’, p. 801.

11 Griffin, Blood Sport: Hunting in Britain since 1066, p. 105; Thompson, Whigs and Hunters, p. 36.

12 Brundage, ‘The Pacification of Elite Lifestyles’, p. 800.

13 Nicholas Cox, The Gentleman’s Recreation in Four Parts: viz. Hunting, Hawking, Fowling, Fishing: Wherein these Generous Exercises Are Largely Treated of, and the Terms of Art for Hunting and Hawking More Amply Enlarged Than Heretofore: Also the Method of Breeding and Managing a Hunting-Horse: Whereto Is Prefix’d a Large Sculpture Giving Easie Directions for Blowing the Horn, and Other Sculptures Inserted Proper to Each Recreation (London, 1697), p. 53.

14 James Williams, ‘Sport and the Elite in Early Modern England’, Sport in History 28-3 (2008), pp. 389-413, p. 403.

15 Daniel C. Beaver, Hunting and the Politics of Violence Before the English Civil War (Cambridge, 2008), p. 23.

16 Peter Edwards, Horses and the Aristocratic Lifestyle in Early Modern England: William Cavendish First Earl of Devonshire (1551–1626) and his Horses (Woodbridge, 2018), p. 211.

17 Edwards, Aristocratic Lifestyle, p. 208.

18 De Belin, From the Deer to the Fox, p. 19.

19 Carr, English Fox Hunting, p. 15.

20 Longrigg, The History of Foxhunting, p. 39.

21 Longrigg, The History of Foxhunting, p. 41.

22 De Belin, From the Deer to the Fox, p. 20.

23 Gervase Markham, A Discource of Horsmanshippe. Wherein the Breeding and Ryding of Horses for Seruice, in a Breefe Manner Is More Methodically Sette Downe Then Hath Been Heeretofore. With a More Easie and Direct Course for the Ignorant, To Attaine to the Same Arte or Knowledge. Also the Manner to Chuse, Trayne, Ryde and Dyet, Both Hunting-Horses, and Running-Horses: With all the Secretes thereto Belonging Discouered. An Arte neuer Heeretofore Written by Any Author (London, 1593), p. 6.

24 Longrigg, The History of Foxhunting, p. 41.

25 George Gascoigne, The Noble Arte of Venerie or Hunting (London, 1575), p. 127.

26 Beaver, Hunting and the Politics of Violence, p. 15.

27 Beaver, Hunting and the Politics of Violence, p. 15; Margaret Cavendish, Philosophical and Physical Opinions (London, 1655), pp. 100-01.

28 Beaver, Hunting and the Politics of Violence, p. 15.

29 Beaver, Hunting and the Politics of Violence, p. 15.

30 Peter Edwards, Horse and Man In Early Modern England (London, 2007), p. 120.

31 Edwards, Horse and Man In Early Modern England, p. 120.

32 De Belin, From the Deer to the Fox, p. 15.

33 De Belin, From the Deer to the Fox, p. 15.

34 Gascoigne, The Noble Arte of Venerie or Hunting, p. 246; Brundage, ‘The Pacification of Elite Lifestyles’, p. 798.

35 Gascoigne, The Noble Arte of Venerie or Hunting, p. 248.

36 Catherine Bates, Masculinity and the Hunt: Wyatt To Spenser (Oxford, 2013), p. 6.

37 Gascoigne, The Noble Arte of Venerie or Hunting, p. 111.

38 Edward Berry, Shakespeare and the Hunt: A Cultural and Social Study (Cambridge, 2001), p. ix.

39 Williams, ‘Sport and the Elite in Early Modern England’, p. 493.

40 Bates, Masculinity and the Hunt, p. 6.

41 Williams, ‘Sport and the Elite in Early Modern England’, p. 403.

42 Berry, Shakespeare and the Hunt, p. 3.

43 Beaver, Hunting and the Politics of Violence, p. 19.

44 Beaver, Hunting and the Politics of Violence, p. 19.

45 Williams, ‘Sport and the Elite in Early Modern England’, p. 392.

46 Markham, A Discource of Horsmanshippe, p. 6.

47 Richard Almond, Medieval Hunting (Stroud, 2003), p. 54.

48 Robin S. Oggins, The Kings and Their Hawks: Falconry in Medieval England (New Haven, 2004), p. 34.

49 Williams, ‘Sport and the Elite in Early Modern England’, p. 391; David R. Starkey, Rivals in Power (London, 1990), p. 11.

50 Bates, Masculinity and the Hunt, p. 8.

51 Williams, ‘Sport and the Elite in Early Modern England’, p. 408.

52 Robert Peake the Elder, Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, with Sir John Harington in the Hunting Field, 1603, oil on canvas, 201.9×147.3 cm., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

53 Roy Strong, Van Dyck: Charles I On Horseback (New York, 1972), p. 56.

54 Christiane Hille, ‘England’s Appelles and the Sprezzatura of Kingship, Charles in the Hunting Field Reconsidered’, Artibus et Historiae 65 (2012), pp. 151-66, p. 151.

55 David Howarth, Images Of Rule: Art And Politics In The English Renaissance (Basingstoke, 1997), p. 135.

56 Howarth, Images Of Rule: Art And Politics in the English Renaissance, p. 136.

57 Daniel Mytens, Charles I and Henrietta Maria Departing for the Chase, c. 1630–2, oil on canvas, 282×408.3 cm, Royal Collection Trust, London.

58 Lois G. Schwoerer, Gun Culture in Early Modern England (Charlottesville, 2016), p. 118.

59 Schwoerer, Gun Culture in Early Modern England, p. 118.

60 Carr, English Fox Hunting, p. 27.

61 Longrigg, The History of Foxhunting, p. 41.

62 Markham, A Discource of Horsmanshippe, p. 6.

63 Markham, A Discource of Horsmanshippe, p. 6.

64 Brundage, ‘The Pacification of Elite Lifestyles’, p. 797.

65 Brundage, ‘The Pacification of Elite Lifestyles’, p. 797.

66 Edwards, Horse and Man In Early Modern England, p. 121.

67 Gascoigne, The Noble Arte of Venerie or Hunting, p. 188.

68 Robert Latham and William Matthews (eds), The Diary of Samuel Pepys (Berkeley, 1970), p. 152.

69 Latham and Matthews (eds), The Diary of Samuel Pepys, p. 152; Brundage, ‘The Pacification of Elite Lifestyles’, p. 802.

70 Williams, ‘Sport and the Elite in Early Modern England’, p. 394.

71 Norbert Elias, Quest for Excitement: Sport and Leisure in the Civilizing Process (Oxford, 1986), p. 166.

72 Edwards, Horse and Man in Early Modern England, p. 123.

73 Cox, The Gentleman’s Recreation, p. 1.

74 Bates, Masculinity and the Hunt, p. 2.

75 Ibid., p. 3.

76 Beaver, Hunting and the Politics of Violence, p. 22.

77 Cockaine, A Short Treatise of Hunting, preface.

78 Michael Baret, An Hipponomie or the Vineyard of Horsemanship (London, 1618), p. 3.

79 Baret, An Hipponomie or the Vineyard of Horsemanship, p. 3.

80 Cox, The Gentleman’s Recreation, p. 2.

81 Cox, The Gentleman’s Recreation, p. 2.

82 Williams, ‘Sport and the Elite in Early Modern England’, p. 394.

83 Berry, Shakespeare and the Hunt, p. 53.

84 Simon Thurley, ‘The Sport of Kings’, in David R. Starkey (ed.), Henry VIII: A European Court in England (London, 1991), pp. 163-72, p. 163; Williams, ‘Sport and the Elite in Early Modern England’, p. 390.

85 Gascoigne, The Noble Arte of Venerie or Hunting, p. 205.

86 Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England: 1500–1800 (London, 1983), p. 273.

87 Thomas, Man and the Natural World, p. 273.

88 Ibid., p. 273.

89 Ibid., p. 287.

90 Thomas Cockaine, A Short Treatise of Hunting (London, 1591).

91 Beaver, Hunting and the Politics of Violence, p. 20.

92 Edwards, ‘Sir Richard Newdigate’, p. 131.

93 De Belin, From the Deer to the Fox, p. 57; Edwards, Horse and Man in Early Modern England, p. 121.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tara Greig

Tara Greig

Tara Greig is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Oxford.