The records of the forest courts of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries together contain many hundreds of brief accounts of hunting expeditions; they constitute a unique source for an activity which is perhaps better known from the idealised descriptions in hunting treatises or imaginative literature. The hunters whose real-life exploits are described in forest eyres, or in the general inquisitions which replaced them during the fourteenth century, came from all ranks of society, and the interest of their stories is by no means confined to what they tell us about hunting techniques, precious though this is. In their descriptions not only of how, but of where and when and in whose company, men – and, very occasionally, women – hunted, the forest records provide scores of vignettes of English medieval rural social life. We see barons and bishops, knights and squires, the rough soldiery of castle garrisons, parish clergy, monks, servants of every type, craftsmen from the towns, local villagers and a host of others at work and at play, travelling and brawling, in the company of family and friends. We are given a unique perspective on rural life and relationships.

It is on the peasant hunters, and the light their activities throw on peasant life and experience, that I propose to concentrate here. For despite the prohibitions of forest law, the danger contained in encounters with forest officers and the severity of the penalties which might follow detection, the peasantry of forest villages continued to take deer in the royal forests.