Hunting, Hawking and the Early Tudor Gentleman
James Williams considers hunting as the ideal pastime for the nobility in the sixteenth century.
‘By God’s Body I would rather that my son should hang than study literature. It behoves the sons of gentlemen to blow horn calls correctly, to hunt skilfully, to train a hawk well and carry it elegantly. But the study of literature should be left to clodhoppers.’
When, in 1517, a now anonymous gentleman expressed this view to Richard Pace, the great humanist may have been exasperated, but certainly not surprised. It was a familiar sentiment in early Tudor England: despite the protests of a few humanists such as Desiderius Erasmus and Sir Thomas More, hunting was deemed by most to be not only a symbol of knighthood, but an activity that marked out the true gentleman. But what was it about hunting and hawking that made them appropriate pastimes for the early Tudor gentleman, and why did they retain this position?
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