During Medieval times, local lords strove to maintain & monopolize the forest reserves & the taking of big game in those forest reserves, & small game in warrens. They were most successful in England after the Norman Conquest, & in Gascony from the 12C. These were large sanctuaries of woodland — the royal forest — where populations of game animals were kept & watched over by gamekeepers. The peasantry could not hunt in these gameparks, poaching being subject to severe punishment: the injustice of such "emparked" preserves became a common cause of complaint in vernacular literature. The lower classes mostly had to content themselves with snaring birds & smaller game outside of restricted forest reserves & gameparks.
Piero de' Crescenzi (1233-1321) wrote of Hunting in Book 10 of his Liber ruralium commodorum1304-09. He advised that the gamepark should be stocked with hare, roe deer, red deer, wild boar, & rabbits He recommended the English, French, & Spanish hare specifically He wrote of hunting dogs & their dietary recommendations for each season & even times of the day to feed them Those participating in "the hunt" lived with unique vocabularies, customs, & ancient rituals.
As time passed, the invention of the terms & rituals of Medieval hunting for nobles was attributed by Malory & others to the Arthurian knight Sir Tristram, who was seen both as the model of the noble huntsman, & the originator of its rituals:As he (Sir Tristram) grew in power & strength he laboured in hunting & hawking - never a gentleman that we ever heard of did more. Reportedly, he devised good methods to take beasts of venery, & beasts of the chase & all kinds of vermin, & all the terms used in hawking & hunting. And therefore the book of venery, of hawking & huntinSee: du Fouilloux, Jaques (1561). La Venerie de Jaques du Fouilloux Turbervile, George (1575)The Noble Art of Venerie or Huntyng(A translation of du Fouilloux)
By the 16C, areas of European land reserved for breeding & hunting of game were of 3 kinds, according to their degree of enclosure & being subject toForest Laws:
Forests, large unenclosed areas of wilderness
Chases, which normally belonged to nobles, not the crown; &
Game Parks, which were enclosed, & not subject to traditional Forest Laws.
See
Joyce Salisbury, The Beast Within. Animals in the Middle Ages (New York, 1994)
Chasse L.-J. Bord and J.-P. Mugg, La chasse au Moyen Age. Occident latin, Ve–XVe siècle (Paris, 2008)
Robert Delort, Le commerce des fourrures en Occident à la fin du Moyen Age, 2 vols. (Rome, 1978)
HH J. Cummins, The Hound and the Hawk. The Art of Medieval Hunting (London, 2001)
Hunting A. Smets and B. V an den Abeele, “Medieval Hunting” in Animals in the Medieval Age (Oxford, 2011).
Hannele Klemettilä, Animals and Hunters in the Late Middle Ages (Routledge, 2015)
Edward of Norwich, The Master of Game , ed. W. Baillie-Grohman and F. Baillie-Grohman (Philadelphia, 2005)
MH R. Almond, Medieval Hunting (Phoenix Mill, 2003)
Poétique A. Strubel and C. de Saulnier, La poétique de la chasse au Moyen Age: Les livres de chasse du XIVe siècle (Paris, 1994)
