Poaching in Pickering Forest
A study of the nature of poaching in
Pickering Forest
This section
relies on David Rivard’s The
Poachers of Pickering Forest 1282 to 1338, a detailed study of poaching
in Pickering.
The
Blakey Moor Expedition
On 23 March
1334 Nicholas Meynell led an expedition out on Blakey Moor above Farndale, to poach for deer in
Pickering Forest. This suggests that many of the records of medieval poaching
at Pickering which involved folk from Farndale, may have been to offences
committed in the forests in and around Farndale, which might have been
administered as part of the larger forest.
Meynell was a
nobleman with a band of at least forty men and boys, including tenants and
under tenants, clergymen and knights, and the young Peter de Mauley, Baron of
Mulgrave. They carried bows and arrows and led gazehounds, or
greyhounds, who would track their prey.
The party
slew forty two harts and hinds that day. They
brazenly left the decapitated heads of nine harts,
impaled on stakes on the moor.
Seven months
later, the noblemen of the hunting party appeared before the Justices of the
Forest, whilst the poorer ordinary folk were outlawed.
Categories
of Poachers
Poaching
activity cut across class lines. It was a lark for noble gentry, and an act of
desperation for those of ordinary rank. The elite ranks produced handbooks for
the ritual and practical conduct of hunts and lyrical and epic poetry was
composed to describe the chase. For the lower social orders the hunting of deer
bore more risk, a breach of the increasingly sophisticated forest law. Fear and
suspicion accompanied the expansion of regulation. The laws prevented the
control of game when crops were at risk, required the mutilation of dogs
prevent them from hunting within the forests, and forbad the carrying of a bow
within the forest. Hunting therefore became associated with freedom, feasting,
and rebellion against authority. By poaching, the locals around Pickering expressed
themselves in competition with the forest administration.
David Rivard
studied 509 cases from the eyre
records, identifying 399 individuals, 365 poachers and 34 receivers of venison,
between 1282 and the close of the eyre in 1338. He identified three subgroups
of poachers. The elite poachers included the peerage and higher gentry. The
middling poachers included the clergy, servants of clergymen, forest
officers, lesser gentry folk, artisans, tradesmen, urban poachers, and
receivers. His largest group were the lowly poachers, the peasantry.
Elite
poachers included Peter de Mauley, fourth baron of Mulgrave, who was with Lord
Meynell involved in the Blakey Moor raid. Peter had inherited his father's
lands in 1309, an estate that embraced at least six knights' fees, four capital
messuages, three parks, and the castle and orchard
of Mulgrave. A pardoned supporter of Thomas, earl of Lancaster, Peter seems to
have been a regular hunter. His expeditions seem to have been large, social
gatherings. Another episode recorded him in the company of many others
unknown taking two harts in Wheeldale Rigg.
Sir John Fauconberg was another knight with a taste for illegally
hunting in the royal forests. Having taken three deer in the forest of Pickering and the woodlands of Whitby in 1323, Sir John was arrested by Hugh
Dispenser junior, imprisoned, and fined the vast sum of £66 13s 4d. He appealed
to the king's mercy from prison and was released after paying a tenth of the
fine.
Knights
often hunted at the head of poaching parties in Pickering Forest. In 1334, Edmund Hastings,
who held four oxgangs in Roxby and the forestership
of Parnell de Kingthorpe, went out with members of
his household and hunted a hart on Midsummer Eve, perhaps to provide the
main course for a seasonal feat. He was caught and forced to present a letter
of pardon from Earl Thomas to secure his release.
Sir John
Percy and his brother Sir William, heirs of the Percy family of Kildale, a
cadet branch of the powerful Percys were also present in the expedition of Lord
Meynell and the Baron of Mulgrave, for which they were imprisoned and ransomed
for £2 27s. Sir Thomas of Bolton, lord of the manors of Hutton-upon-Derwent and
Hinderskelfe, went poaching with a large party of the
gentry and hounds and killed two hinds.
However
Rivard’s review of the lay subsidy
records suggests that only a small fraction of the poachers had adequate wealth
to tax. Of the 365 poachers he studied, only forty two, comprising 11 percent,
paid taxes in the period he studied, so the majority of Pickering poachers were
probably too poor to pay the tax. The vast majority of the poachers he studied
possessed goods valued at £3 or less.
By 1300 the
Crown had set the minimum income necessary for knightly status, the distraint
of knighthood, at £40 of landed income. For most of the population a yearly
income of £10 seems to have been the benchmark of wealth. The small amount of
goods possessed by the Pickering poachers
suggests that all but the richest poachers remained not too distant from a very
modest standard of living.
The artisans
and tradesmen suggested a pattern of family poaching similar to that of the
elite gentry. William and Roger Carter, accompanied by Gascon militiamen from Scarborough Castle, hunted hares. William
Cooper of Scarborough and his
apprentice travelled several miles into the forest in 1307, taking a stag for
their friend William Russell, who provided the hounds for the hunt and hosted
the feast. Hugh the Barker, of Whitby,
hunted a deer in Ellerbeck and was outlawed. Adam the Spicer was indicted for
hunting in the company of Nicholas Hastings in 1305 and for the shooting of two
deer calves. Millers, smiths, and coopers were amongst the poachers included in
the Pickering records.
Poacher-receivers
received the carcasses for resale, but also poached themselves.
Forest
officials, especially the lower-class foresters and woodwards,
had a reputation for corruption and often took to a little poaching themselves.
These included William Vescey, a justice of the
forest; William Latimer, who held the officer of verderer at the time of
an eyre; and even the Warden of the Forest, Ralph Hastings. Two
foresters-turned-poachers were engaged by the abbot of Rievaulx, and were branded confirmed
poachers, suggesting that they were regularly brought before the justices.
The frequency of this designation suggests that many officers profited from
exploiting their commoner neighbours and their masters at the same time. The
foresters John Gosnargh and Walter Smith were both
branded common poachers and accused of sending venison to John
Wintringham, a monk of Whitby. Besides
these cases of habitual offenders, there were other officers who took advantage
of their privileged position. Richard the Forester accompanied Sir John Fauconberg’s party of 1323. Ingram the Forester found
himself charged for an incident in which he resorted to using an axe to slay a
young doe but succeeded only in maiming it, until his dog could track it to the
ditch where the deer was killed. These activities suggest an abuse of power in
Pickering Forest. Although forest officials enjoyed a salary, they also
probably benefited from extortion as well as their own hunting expeditions.
Of the 365
cases studied by Rivard, 80 percent or 293 of poachers fall into the more lowly
class, most of them leaving no record save their appearances in the eyre rolls.
Amongst
these were the garciones, or servant boys who
led the hounds in the hunts of the gentry. John Pauling, the lad of Peter
Acklam took part in the hunt of a deer on Yarnolfbeck
in 1322 and of another on Hutton Moor in 1323. Nicholas of Levisham,
lad of Geoffrey of Everley, poached with his master and helped slay three harts and three hinds in Thrush Fen on the Monday
before Whitsunday, presumably to provide food for his master's holiday table. The
garciones poachers were generally outlawed.
Their loyal service to a local lord did not save them from the full penalty of
the law.
Most of the
lowly poachers of Pickering were not folk whose names appeared in the lay
subsidies, and their poaching activities seem to have been of a seasonal
nature. Sixty one percent of these people never paid a fine to the eyre, but
were outlawed.
There was a
significant time lag, often more than thirty years, between eyre. So non appearance might simply have reflected disappearance
for various reasons including death. Many offenders might have simply evaded
the eyre for fear of the punishment they faced. Of the 143 poachers studied by
Rivard who paid, 61 percent paid fines of 1 mark or less, while a quarter paid
fines of 6s 6d or less. Fines were imposed by the eyre operated on an ability
to pay scale. The low level fines indicates that most Pickering poachers
possessed little wealth.
Edward
Miller in his study of northern peasant holdings concluded that 12 percent of
the population of Yorkshire might be classed as rich peasantry, possessing
holdings of over thirty acres. The majority of the lowly poachers in Rivard’s
study fell below that standard. Non appearance in the
tax subsidies suggests that most were of very meagre wealth, and likely to have
been poverty stricken. Holding lands of comparative small size, much of which
may have been recently reclaimed from infertile moor and woodland in the
assarting boom of the thirteenth century, these poachers could easily have felt
compelled to supplement their meagre diets with the venison of Pickering.
Edward Miller felt that the thirteenth and fourteenth century forest dwellers
of Pickering were on a journey to the margin, so opportunities for
venison must have been too tempting to resist.
Drivers
of poaching activity
There was a
rise in poaching activity during periods of hardship and political instability.
The periods 1315 to 1317 and 1322 to 1323 were disastrous years of torrential
rain and crop failure, when the price of grain rose because of the great
scarcity of wheat and there was a general scarcity of food across the
countryside. Under such desperate conditions, a dramatic rise in the number of
individuals poaching for those years might be expected. Yet there was no such
increase and indeed, there are no recorded incidents for the year 1315, and
1316 and 1317 each saw only five cases per year. However the major crop of the
lands around Pickering was oats. Oats seem to have continued their normal
levels of production. Bolton Priory estates in the West Riding of Yorkshire
produced 80 per cent of their normal yield of oats in 1316 and cropped only
11.5 percent of rye and 12 percent of beans. A crisis that struck primarily at
the staple crops of wheat and barley will certainly have caused problems, but
may not have provided a strong enough incentive for poaching. Nevertheless
other constraints did produce notable increases in poaching. The high rates of
1311 and 1331 to 1332 coincided with the poor oats harvests recorded in the
estate records of the bishop of Winchester for those same years. So on analysis
there seems to have been a definite link between poaching and the periods when
the harvest threatened the livelihood of the farming folk.
|
Recorded
indictments for poaching |
Comments |
|
Year |
Recorded
indictments for poaching |
Comments |
|
Year |
Recorded
indictments for poaching |
Comments |
|
|
1282 |
5 |
|
|
1314 |
3 |
|
|
1333 |
13 |
|
|
1292 |
5 |
|
|
1316 |
5 |
Great
Famine and sheep and cattle epidemic (“murrain”) |
|
1334 |
45 |
Beginning
of eyre |
|
1293 |
24 |
|
|
1317 |
5 |
Great
Famine & murrain |
|
1336 |
32 |
Scottish
campaign ended |
|
1294 |
14 |
|
|
1321 |
4 |
Famine |
|
1337 |
3 |
|
|
1304 |
5 |
|
|
1322 |
20 |
Famine and
political turbulance |
|
1338 |
6 |
|
|
1305 |
41 |
|
|
1323 |
32 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
1306 |
13 |
|
|
1324 |
12 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
1307 |
23 |
|
|
1325 |
11 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
1308 |
6 |
|
|
1326 |
3 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
1309 |
6 |
|
|
1328 |
7 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
1311 |
35 |
Poor
harvest |
|
1329 |
20 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
1312 |
17 |
|
|
1330 |
8 |
Scottish
campaign began |
|
|
|
|
|
1313 |
10 |
|
|
1331 |
15 |
Poor
harvest |
|
|
|
|
(From David
Rivard’s case studies)
The famine
year of 1321 to 1322 also witnessed a strong upswing in the number of cited
poachers. Although the cause of the agricultural difficulties that provoked the
famine are not known, bad weather, perhaps caused by drought instead of heavy
rains, and the devastating sheep murrain that struck England from 1315 to 1318
must have played a role.
It is likely
that the political turbulence of the time also contributed. In 1321 there were
only four reported poachers but in 1322, there were twenty. This increase might
be explained by the defeat in battle of the master of the forest, Earl Thomas
of Lancaster, at the
Battle of Boroughbridge, who was captured and executed by Edward II. In the
same year Edward was defeated and fled before the Scots at the Battle
of Byland. The death of the immediate overlord of the forest must have been
an irresistible invitation to poachers to exploit the unprotected deer of
Pickering. Indeed, a special commission was appointed by Edward II that year to
investigate the rise in forest crime. The defeat of the king, the nominal
master of the forest following the death of Thomas, must have increased the
temptation to take deer at the expense of an absent, impotent authority.
Political
unrest might also have been responsible for the relatively high rates of
poaching in the years 1331 to 1336 when Edward III actively pursued his
campaign against the Scots from his court at York.
This was a period of an increased demand for resources caused by political
unrest, and a high incidence of violence in Yorkshire. The disturbances brought
about by a resident army and the imminent threat of invasion might have
inspired an increase in the rate of poaching. Foraging soldiers and hungry
peasants alike would have sought out deer in unstable times, when the risk of
detection might seem lessened by the presence of more immediate external
threats enemies to occupy the attention of the forest authorities.
Repeated
Scottish raiding on the North Riding throughout the last years of Edward II and
the early reign of Edward III also probably contributed to high levels of
poaching. Constant raids carried off many chattels and destroyed property, so
much so that the crown in 1319 found no taxable property in 128 vills of the North Riding. Widespread devastation
must have had an impact on the high levels of poaching in the decade of the
1320s, as peasants and lords deprived of their property took to the forest to
find food.
The
seasonality of poaching offenses in Pickering Forest suggests that the poachers
did not simply follow the traditional hunting season during the "time of
the grease," the season for the elite stag hunt in which the deer were
fattest, which was from 24 June to September. Of 464 dateable instances of
poaching in Rivard’s survey, only a third took place in the optimum season for
recreational hunting. The Spring months particularly March, when the first
break in the upland winter might have occurred, and May, when spring was in
full bloom tended to coincide with the final depletion of the winter larder,
when high grain prices and hunger might drive poachers to seek Pickering's
deer, and were common periods for poaching. Winter saw the least activity,
because the harsh northern and moorland weather impeded opportunities for
hunting. Poaching was a year round activity, but the pattern also reflected the
periods when ordinary folk might have been most driven to supplement their
diets.
Pursuing
game, often with anonymity, the majority of Pickering poachers from the lower
classes and must have sought game because they were driven to do so by their
poverty, and the removal of their ancestor’s rights to hunt freely for food.
Uncertainty and poverty, during times of war, famine, and disease, and
resentment of the new forest laws, were powerful drivers. Ties of family,
friendship, patronage, and common need, together with a unified resentment of
forest law, bound groups of these poachers together.
This is the
context in which we meet the poachers of Pickering forest who came from
Farndale, many of whom were ancestors of the Farndale family.