tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6783095578355381199.post4334513799981394608..comments2024-03-08T19:19:27.806+02:00Comments on Environment, Law, and History: Digital library I: A New Treatise on the Laws for Preservation of the Game (1766)David Schorrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17660528755791077974noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6783095578355381199.post-2166563850256324622018-03-04T07:39:21.768+02:002018-03-04T07:39:21.768+02:00Thanks for the explanations and the references!Thanks for the explanations and the references!David Schorrhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17660528755791077974noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6783095578355381199.post-40341462569838488312018-03-04T02:24:23.309+02:002018-03-04T02:24:23.309+02:00This digital library project is fascinating and mo...This digital library project is fascinating and most welcome. And I'm delighted that you begin it with an item on wildlife law. The prohibition in the 1390 Game Law on the use of "fyrets, hays, nets, harepipes, cords, [or] other engines" was as much an effort at social control as it was an attempt to manage wildlife in medieval England. Conigries were rabbit warrens. Fyrets were ferrets. Hays were nets used to catch rabbits. And harepipes were snares (the making and deployment of which is even now the subject of a YouTube movie). The devices were used by poachers, whose assembly (covinage) on the edges of private lands, especially on Sundays when landowners were in church, was seen as a sign of potential social unrest. This Game Law, which spelled the end of commonalty hunting on unenclosed land in England, was one of the qualification statutes aimed at restricting hunting to certain social classes. In fact, its property restriction wasn't terribly exclusive and, after 1390, the law was almost never enforced, perhaps because poaching was an activity that all social classes enjoyed in medieval England. See also, Richard Almond, MEDIEVAL HUNTING (2003); William Perry Marvin, "Slaughter and Romance: Hunting Reserves in Late Medieval England," 224-252 in MEDIEVAL CRIME AND SOCIAL CONTROL (Barbara Hanawalt & David Wallace eds. 1999); William Perry Marvin, HUNTING LAW AND RITUAL IN MEDIEVAL ENGLISH LITERATURE (2006). Geoffrey Wandesforde-Smithhttp://gawsmith.ucdavis.edunoreply@blogger.com