Download PDF | Robin S. Oggins - The Kings and Their Hawks_ Falconry in Medieval England- (2004).
268 Pages
Introduction
This work began as a doctoral dissertation under the late James Lea Cate at the University of Chicago. About a week before my preliminary orals I met with Mr. Cate and he asked me, ‘‘Well, boy’’ (I was thirty), ‘‘have you picked a dissertation topic yet?’’ I answered, ‘‘No sir, but I’d like to do something on twelfth- or thirteenth-century England.’’ ‘‘Well,’’ he said, ‘‘about twenty years ago I started to do work on English royal falconry, but there was too much to do for an article, so I’ve been saving it as a dissertation topic for some student with an imagination.’’ I left his office stunned. I had only the vaguest ideas about falconry at the time and couldn’t tell a falcon from a hawk or, for that matter, a hawk from a handsaw.
Time has shown just how good a topic I had been given. I began by focusing on the birds and the sport but soon found that the men who flew and cared for the kings’ birds were also important and interesting. From there the topic expanded to include social attitudes, religious symbolism, and artistic imagery. In a way the study of falconry has provided me with a series of windows into the medieval world. The main subjects of this book are the sports of falconry and hawking and the men who kept, trained, carried, and (often) flew the royal falcons and hawks. The kings enter into the picture because our main sources are royal records and because the personal tastes in sport of individual kings were manifested in royal expenditure.
This is not a book about hunting except insofar as falconry and hawking are considered branches of hunting. In falconry and hawking, the training of the bird is an essential feature of the sport. Hunting dogs also have to be trained, but a successful hunt can occur with imperfectly trained dogs; a successful falcon hunt, at least to the expert eye, requires a well-trained bird. In hunting the hunter often kills the prey; in falconry and hawking, the bird does. Contemporaries were certainly aware of the differences, as can be seen from a number of literary debates between falconers and hawkers as to which was the nobler sport.
On the other hand medieval kings probably did not reflect much on the differences. When they felt like hunting, and the season and conditions were right, they hunted; when they felt like hawking, they hawked. There was even some overlap between members of the hunting and falconry establishments. However, to try to sort out the similarities and differences would require an altogether different kind of book. My own feeling is that falconry and hunting were based on the same human desires and instincts, followed roughly similar patterns of development, and were manifested in generally comparable ways. But, like all other human activities, each developed its own techniques and rituals; and to lump falconry and hunting together is to obscure some of the essential characteristics of each.
The dissertation was based on printed sources, but a year working at the Public Record Office (PRO) and the British Library made me realize how rich the surviving manuscript sources were. The section on royal falconry effectively ends with the reign of Edward I. While I was working at the PRO there was no completed itinerary for Edward II, and hence many records of the latter’s reign were undated. I did look at the dated records, however, and found that the essential aspects of English royal falconry were fully developed under Edward I and that later material added little to the overall picture.
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