PRESENTED BY
THE DOMESDAY BOOK OF DOGS
The Forest Laws.
For a nation of so-called dog-lovers Britain has seen some
unspeakable cruelty to dogs that borders on the horrific. Usually enacted
in the name of the forest laws that were first introduced by Canute in a witan
of 1016, Constitutiones de Foresta, and lasting for over six-hundred
years until they finally petered out during the reign of the Stuarts.
There were no similar laws in France but the Norman conquerors of Britain took
to Canute’s, quite mild, forest laws so ardently that they even added to
them and introduced seemingly ever more punitive and imaginative punishments on
dogs, if not men, who fell afoul of the laws.
The idea behind the forest laws was, amongst other things, to ensure that the dogs of the lower classes were still able to do their work but would be unable to harass the king’s deer. Various methods of disabling dogs, or expeditation, were practised from hoxing, or hock-sinewing, where tendons of a rear leg would be cut, through hambling, where the metacarpal pad of a front paw was cut completely out, to lawing, which might be better described as de-clawing where three toes of the front right foot would be hacked off with a hammer and chisel. These disabling methods would mainly be used on mastiffs or large curs such as guard dogs or butchers’ dogs. Some dogs were exempt from mutilation for various reasons; the king of the day may exempt certain hunters - usually for vermin control - as in this instance (one of many supplied by Jesse, 1866) from King John in 1206, the seventh year of his reign:
“THE KING TO HUGO DE NEVILLE, &c.
“Know ye that we have granted to
Peter Bordeaux that he may keep six or seven dogs for hunting the hare and fox,
and three greyhounds. And furthermore we command you that he be not a
loser on this occasion, nor be dragged into court.
“In the presence of WILLIAM FITZ-PETER at Clarendon, 2nd Jan.”
7 John,
1205-6.
Nowadays we may regard a forest as any extensive area of woodland but that has not always been the case; originally a forest was an area of land, treed or otherwise, measured by metes and bounds and subject to forest law. In fact, for people addicted to riding to hounds from dawn to dusk trees could be something of a hindrance. Wide open spaces were required for a good gallop after deer. Manwood, 1598, waxed poetically “a certain territorie of wooddy grounds and fruitful pastures, privileged for wild beasts and foules of forrest, chase, and warren, to rest and abide in, in the safe protection of the king, for his princely delight and pleasure.”
All forests contained farms and villages, and all the inhabitants were allowed to keep dogs. The dogs mustn’t be greyhounds as Canute had proclaimed that greyhounds could only be owned by freemen, the lower class serfs in farms and villages were usually way down the pecking order. Perhaps this law spawned the lurcher, simply obtain a sheepdog bitch in heat, find a male greyhound to use as a stud (with or without the owner’s permission) and away you go once the pups have developed. Every dark and windy night, your own fast dog, sagacious, tractable and easily trained to boot. To keep spaniels you’d require permission from the monarch or they faced being destroyed. Spaniels are much too quick and busy to be allowed anywhere near the king’s deer, which can be skittish and easily distressed at the best of times - the deer were so cosseted that, lest it frighten the deer, Sir Sampson Darrel was fined 5/- (five shillings) “for erecting a Wind Milne on his own ground, within the Forrest”, Jesse, 1866. Small dogs were permitted as long as they fit through the dog gauge or dog measure, these oval rings were normally stirrup-shaped with a diameter of about seven inches by five inches (fig 1). Heelers and smaller pastoral dogs would usually fit through the gauge; perhaps they were the ramhundt and the langeran mentioned by Canute (although, rather oddly, sheep were banned from forest land under the Angevin Plantagenets). Greyhounds or scent hounds were not tolerated at all within the forests unless one had received express permission from the king or one of his delegates in the nobility or clergy. Verderers and foresters checked all areas within each forest every three years looking for those unmutilated dogs who failed to fit through the measure. The owners of those dogs that failed the test were usually fined three shillings unless they were strapped for cash and then the fine was reduced due to poverty: King John gladly accepted hounds, horses or hawks in lieu of a fine.
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| Fig 1). Browsholme dog measure. Jesse, 1866. |
Our king the first William, Hugh Lupus our Earl,
Then
poaching I ween was no sport for a churl:
A
noose for his neck who a snare should contrive,
Who
skinned a dead buck was himself skinned alive.
Apparently only men were expected to get up to no good and there were four situations that would see a man whisked away to the local manor, and prison, before his feet could touch the ground:
Stable-stand. When a man was found with a functional bow of any sort ready for
firing; or standing ready to slip greyhounds.
Dogdraw. When a man was caught using a dog to follow the trail of a
previously wounded deer.
Back-bear. When a man was caught in flagrante delicto carrying off a
deer he’d killed.
Bloody-hand. When a suspicious-looking man was discovered coursing, or
returning from coursing, within the forest, with hands imbrued with blood -
quite literally caught red-handed.
Being discovered in the forest wearing Lincoln green, even if you lived within the bounds, was enough to get you convicted of poaching. The punishment for poaching at one time was castration, blinding and the amputation of feet and hands. This rather severe punishment was changed by Edward I, Longshanks, who expressed his belief that “excessive severity always leads to the contrary extreme” in his Corta de Foresta and decreed “that no English subject shall henceforward lose life or limb for any trespass of vert or venison.” The new punishment being a very heavy fine or one year’s imprisonment. Should he not be able to stump up the fine himself or from family and friends after one year, he would be obliged to “abjure the realm”. Shakespeare may have fled to London around about 1590 after being accused of poaching and Ritchie, 1981, posits that as Shakespeare drove cattle to his father’s butcher’s shop it could have been his dogs that rioted on the forest land. The young Shakespeare may not have had much say in the matter as the dogs were his responsibility, which would have automatically made him guilty.
Occasionally exemptions to expeditation could be bought in advance in a type of protection money known as houndgeld, or hungill, Cox, 1905. Burton on Deeside had one such exemption for the entire village and according to Coward, 1903, the dogs in the rest of the Forest of Wirral were tested by a smaller gauge in a most cruel fashion “all dogs had to pass their fore-feet through a small gauge or ring, only one inch and a half by half an inch in size, and if too large the unfortunate animal’s feet were whittled down until they would go through.” Coward was writing a couple of centuries after the test had fallen out of practice and it’s possible he may not be entirely accurate. It’s interesting he mentions a different type of gauge and he’s obviously referring to some form of either hambling or lawing but surely mutilation of one foot would do, as seemed to be the case in the rest of the country, or most of it. He could be quoting from the same source as Gilbey, 1913, who said: “At a later period, during the reign of Henry I (1100-1135), all the dogs kept near the forest were disabled by the amputation of a claw. A subsequent law required that the ball of one foot be cut out…” Whittaker, 1872, also provides a description of a foot gauge being tested on every foot; this time in the Forest of Bowland. Unfortunately the illustration provided is that of the full sized, stirrup-shaped dog measure.
At some point hock-sinewing (or genuscissio) was deemed unsuitable, perhaps it was considered a tad too cruel, and the method of expeditation was changed to hambling. Incising a mastiff’s front paw and scooping out the metacarpal pad might seem simple enough on paper but in practice it proved a problem. The dogs were likely maimed as puppies but pity the poor men, of whom several would be required, attempting to hold an adult mastiff down while its paw was mutilated (dogs were only checked for compliance to the law every three years). And these were not modern mastiffs, which are formidable enough, but rather mastiffs that could be used as war dogs, when their feet were intact, and also for bull and bear-baiting; these dogs were dubbed great country curs for a reason. Perhaps because of what must have been an ordeal for the men involved Henry II had the method of maiming changed to lawing. Arthur Croxton Smith, 1945, supplies Manwood’s description of the crippling method: “Three Claws of the Fore feet shall be cut off by the Skin: And accordingly the same is now used, by setting one of his Fore feet upon a piece of Wood eight inches thick, and a Foot square, and then setting a Chizel of two Inches broad upon the three claws of his Fore foot, to strike them off at one Blow.” Regarding the shape of a paw one might imagine it would be difficult to strike off three toes in a single attempt without severing part of the foot as well and after the first strike one may not get a second chance with a mastiff.
Although the forest laws generally fell into disuse in the mid-seventeenth century the Duke of Montagu, Lord of the Forest, was still using the gauge in 1770. Following an election quarrel with his neighbours he seized their beagles and shot the ones that failed to fit through the measure.
The takings from fines in the Forest of Galtres was usually nine or ten pounds a year but in the sixteenth year of the reign of Edward II this plummeted to a mere 58s. 10d. as the whole country thereabouts was burned and destroyed by the ‘Scotch enemies’. Vast tracts of land had been appropriated for the monarchs’ personal hunting grounds and by the time of Henry VIII there were an estimated sixty-nine royal forests. Fines raised against dog owners, plus bought exemptions against expeditation, must have been a nice little earner for the exchequer.
Manwood’s Treatise of the Forest Laws. John Manwood. 1598.
Researches into the history of the British Dog vol II. George R. Jesse. 1866.
An history of the original Parish of Whalley … Whittaker T. D. 1872. Footnote p279.
Picturesque Cheshire. Coward, T.A. 1903.
The royal forests of England. Cox, J.C. 1905.
Hounds in old days. Sir Walter Gilbey, Baronet. 1913.
The British Dog. Ritchie, Carson. 1981.
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