Medieval social history has made leaps and bounds over the last century, changing from studies largely upper class based to more general social history of medieval people.  However, one field of social history that is still being overly ignored by historians is that of medieval sport.  The majority of those works that have been written have covered mainly upper class sport such as the tournament.  This is partially because of the vast amount of evidence that exists for such activities compared to that of peasant sport and also because allot of the sources have already been discovered.

     New social historians have been applying the technique of using public records to try and piece together aspects of medieval life.  Two historians have done this in regard to medieval sport.  In his ground breaking work on medieval English football,  F. P. Magoun uses several public records to illustrate ball games in medieval England but only those who had been either been brought to his attention or that he had come across.(1)    Decades later,  John Marshall Carter, after doing his dissertation using public records in thirteenth century England, began trying to use these same records to piece together aspects of medieval sport contained within them, and he wrote several studies on them, including a general study of sport using several eyre records.
 

John Marshall Carter’s Study

     In 1986,  John Marshall Carter published his study “Sports, Crime and Peasants in the Thirteenth Century England” in the Canadian Journal of History of Sport.(2)   His study focused on Yorkshire eyre of 1218-19, Berkshire eyre of 1248, London eyre of 1244, Wiltshire eyre of 1249 and the London eyre of 1276, and he uses these eyres to do a largely quantitative study of mentions of possible sport in them.  One of the main problems with this kind of study, as he points our early, is these records often place things in a poor light because the they are inherently biased towards showing the underside of society.

     Dr. Carter’s methodology is well setup but is often poorly executed.  He begins with a description of the thirteenth century English legal system to give the reader a base overview, then he begins his study.  The study begins with a basic comparison of the 3 regions covered by the study.  York used as the northwest England example for the study,  London used as the urban and southeast example for the study, and Berkshire and Wiltshire represent the south west region.  While he compares the geography of the areas by their wealth and historical differences, he does little more than lists which shires had how many cases involving sport.  He only once looks back to the geography in the study to see what results can be had.  Some areas may have had a concentration of certain sports or interactions between certain people that were not found elsewhere.  An important question about geography was never asked.  Why do 33% of the cases come from Yorkshire, which is the earliest eyre and 55% come from the two London eyres,  but only 12% of the cases were found in Berkshire and Wiltshire eyres?  Could there be something about these shires or this area that lent to the results?  Or could the politics of the era influence it.

     Next Carter goes on to listing the incidences of each individual sport.  Carter found 17 different activities that he defined as sport.(3)   Among these he includes boating, drinking, hunting, wrestling and many others.  Several of these are problematic because from the accounts it is difficult to tell whether the action is actually being conducted as a sport.  Two that are particularly problematic are boating and horse riding.  These were both done as sport but were also simply means of transportation.  Because Carter doesn’t list every case he uses it is hard to determine what exact criteria he used to determine sport.  On certain occasions, the simple act of not describing these borderline activities as not being a sport places them in the study.(4)   This is rather inclusive and without going over all the data it is difficult to say wether he was consistent about it but he appears to be.  The most frequent sports Carter found were drinking in a tavern which accounts for 14% of cases involving sport and 12% were of boating.  The two sports with the lowest incidents are falconry and ice skating each with about 2% of the total incidents.  Ball games are absent from the lists although we knew that they existed in the period.

     The next issue that Carter takes up is that of occupations of those mentioned in the incidences.  He divides these up by the individual eyres.  He found that 117 people were mentioned in the 66 cases,  with two cases of note.  One was a chess match that resulted in a fight between a knight and a non-knight.  The other was a set of wrestling matches between monks of the prior of Bermundseye and several people from London.  Both indicating some interaction within sport between different classes. Carter found that 74% of those mentioned in the incidents have no occupation and he classifies them as peasants, meaning of neither noble or a cleric.  The only other occupation mentioned of particular note was that of a serjeant for keeping the king’s falcon.

     Next Carter goes on to discusses various information about the incidences.  He also spends a little time discussing the mentions of women and children, and then he begins to make some comparisons between the rural and urban foci of his study.  He also discusses the fact that most sport mentioned takes place outside and not inside.  He then goes on to discuss “war” sports which consist of 48% of the sports mentioned and team/group sports which consist of 42% of the sports mentioned.  Then to finish up this section he returns to discussing competition between different classes.

     Next Dr. Carter goes on to ask the questions of “How violent were the sports and recreations of thirteenth century English peasants?”(5)   and “Is the recreational violence found in the court records of the thirteenth century indicative of violence in society”(6)  and finishes his study on this topic.  He begins by discussing violence and medieval society and possible reasons why the peasants may have allowed such violence to erupt.

     Carter then begins attempting to show how sport shows violence in society and where this violence comes from.  He begins with alcohol.  He shows that there are several cases where drinking directly relates to violence.  In his study, he found that 15% of the cases mentioned alcohol and he suspects that far greater cases actually had alcohol involved.  He then goes on and discusses his ideas on alcohol in medieval society.  He makes no solid statements except that alcohol was a primary drink of the lower class and that lot of alcohol was probably consumed.   Carter then goes on to discuss weapons role in the “violence” in these cases.  He found that in 15% of cases in the study, one participant in a sport injured or killed another person.

     Carter then returns to his quantitative analysis of the records.  Carter found that 77% of the records were brought into the records because it resulted in death.  He found this statistic “staggering”(7)  even though a large portion of the records overall are either death related or property related.  There just are not that many sports that are related to property to shift the balance.  In fact it shows a very distinct problem with the use of these records,  they give an inherently skewed view, from which Carter tries to make into a good general view of sport in the thirteenth century without comparing it to any other source specifically one that isn’t skewed or is at least skewed in a different direction.

     Carter then continues back into his quantitative study this time of the methods of prosecution and then of the punishments.  While his findings are interesting they don’t show us much because he doesn’t compare them to cases as a whole in the eyres.  All the information on this shows is that there were in the court’s eyes people who were guilty of a crime in a case where a sport was involved and they also show that at least on occasion violent acts occurred along with sport in thirteenth century England.
 Carter than proceeds to conclude his study.  He states that he showed the value of studying public record in order to learn about the role of sport in medieval society.  He truly does accomplish this task in his study beyond any doubt, however his study is flawed.  He doesn’t use the records to their full advantage, tons of evidence can be gleaned from these records that he appears to have not looked into.  He sums up all of his points except the violence issue which was the last section in his study.

The Oxfordshire Eyre of 1241

     The eyre courts began there development under Henry II, when he initiated them after the Assize of Clarendon in 1166.  Under Henry II, the eyre courts became more and more a regular part of the legal system of England, but under his son John and grandson Henry III the courts became less and less frequent.  These eyre courts were traveling courts of royal justice and often had the same judges that sat on the permanent court at Westminster.  In 1241, the eyre courts that had been traveling since 1240 reached Oxford in Oxfordshire.  The members of the eyre bench were William of York,  Henry of Bath,  Gilbert of Preston and Roger of Thirkelby, and this bench traveled the a circuit that encompassed Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Surrey, Kent, Sussex and Berkshire.  The eyre records are divided into two types of cases:  those that are civil pleas, often dealing with land and land rights, and those that are crown pleas, which include criminal cases and those dealing royal rights and gifts.(8)

     This Oxfordshire eyre roll is the first complete eyre roll and the only one to have more than one copy survive until the eyre of 1285.  The court began hearing cases most likely on Monday 15, April.  The Civil cases first and then those that came under the Crown pleas which were heard before a jury from the area in which they arose.(9)   For the study of sport the Crown pleas are usually the only ones that lend any evidence but in the Oxfordshire eyre there is one case of fishing that entered the record on the Civil side.(10)

     Oxfordshire is located in the southern midlands just north of Berkshire and Wiltshire.  The only distinctive difference between Oxfordshire and Berk-and Wiltshires are that in Oxford sat the university of Oxford which made it the center for the region.  The location of the university appears to have little affect on the eyre rolls.  This is most likely because the students at the university would have been tried in a clerical court instead of a court of royal justice during this period.  But because of this Oxfordshire is slightly wealthier than its neighbors to the south but still not nearly as wealthy as London which sat to the east.(11)

Sport in the Oxfordshire Eyre of 1241

     Just as in the five eyre rolls that John Marshall Carter used in his study, we also find sport related cases in the Oxfordshire eyre.  Some fit the same basic pattern as those that Carter found but there are several that set this study apart.  I have tried as best to my ability to follow the same criteria as Carter did to make the study’s as comparable as possible but since he did not make a listing of his cases I could not go check cases against cases that I think might be similar.

     There are 15 cases in the Oxfordshire eyre that may be sport related or lend information to sport.  Of those we can only be sure of five that are definitely sports related.  The cases in this eyre do not follow the general pattern that Carter’s study does.  The one pattern that appears to somewhat hold is the cases related to boating.  In both studies the instances of boating are one of the highest, in Carter’s study only drinking in a tavern is higher.  Which leads to another oddity, there is no mention of alcohol anywhere in the eyre.  Which would largely undermine Carter’s theory of the role of alcohol in medieval sport but it really doesn’t.

     Unlike the over all study of sport in the eyres, the cases in the Oxfordshire eyre can be divided into three distinct cases.  The first set are accidents that happen in traveling,  these include all the boating cases and the riding case.  There is no mention of the actual activity being done while these accidents happen and they should probably be removed from the study because they tell us nothing except that people can drown in rivers while boating.(12)   The second group is the fishing group, like was mentioned above fishing’s place in medieval society is one of debate and still is looking for evidence.  These cases do give us some interesting information about fishing in thirteenth century England, even though none of them are specifically described as sport.  And lastly, there are the serjeantries.  Serjeantries are granted by the crown for doing some job and in return you receive a grant of land.  Carter only found one such serjeantry related to sport. In the Berkshire eyre of 1248, he found a serjeantry for keeping the king’s gerfalcon.  In the Oxfordshire eyre there are four serjeantries for keeping or raising birds for the crown and one for keeping the king’s forest.

     Many of Carter’s methodologies and conclusions from his study don’t particularly apply to those from the Oxfordshire because the sport that is represented is confined to three activities.  There were no team sports, no alcohol and no acts of violence.  But this does not mean that there is still not allot of information to be gleaned from these records.  Carter in his study attempted to stick to a largely quantitative study of sport but occasionally used cases to represent points.  The studies of these records can be largely served by doing both quantitative and qualitative studies.  Information can be found by comparing similar records and by using the printed versions of these records which allow you to look up participants to see if there is more information available about them and how they interact with their community.
 
Fishing in the Oxfordshire eyre of 1241

     There are three cases related to fishing all of which give us an interesting view of the role of fishing in English society.  Of these, one was found in the civil pleas of the court and the other two in the crown pleas.  Fishing as a sport has been of debate with regards to medieval society.  For many years, many historians pointed to The Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle, in the mid-fifteenth century, as the emergence of sports fishing because there is little record before then of literature of sport fishing.  Then historians started to discover new fragments of treatise from before the Angle treatise in England itself along with several literary mentions of fishing as sport.  Then when they turned to the continent earlier mentions of sport from literary and historical sources.(13)   So there is little doubt that fishing would have been known as sport in thirteenth century England.  However just because it was known as a possible sport does not mean that all instances of it are.

     The first case of fishing in the eyre is in the civil pleas and is actually a case from Huntingdon that had probably been transferred to the eyre court.  The case is quite fascinating John le Daneys, a peasant,(14)  is suing Roger de Quincy, earl of Winchester, for “...by force of arms and breach of the king’s peace he fished in John’s free fishery of Offord Darcy without John’s license.”(15)   This case actually appears to be quite similar to many other fishing cases that made it into the record.  They enter the record when someone fished on someone else’s property.

     One of the main questions this case brings up is was Roger de Quincy fishing himself or was fishing from the fishery done under his orders and is therefore responsible when legal action is take. More than likely it is the later but if for some reason evidence from other cases shows a dramatically different phrasing of cases, that are being filed against someone who ordered an act, then it would be very strong evidence for nobles fishing for sport.

     The second case is much of the same except that it lies in the crown pleas.  Philip son of Robert le Waleis is accused of braking into a fishpond and fishing there along with “others”(16) .  This case does not show sport within itself but when compared to the third case and a case from the Wiltshire eyre it leaves us with some interesting questions about the phrasing of these cases and what it may mean.

     In the third case, Roger Giberis is accused of stealing fish.(17)   Note that this case does not mention the word fishing.  We see something very similar from the Wiltshire eyre of 1249 where William Jog is accused of what is possibly poaching fishponds.(18)  Once again the word fishing isn’t used.  Could this be a distinction between steeling fish for profit and fishing for other reasons?

Serjeantries of Crown Sport in the Oxforshire Eyre of 1241

     The most fascinating glimpse of sport that comes from the Oxfordshire eyre are the serjeantries.  In thirteenth century England, a serjeantry would be granted from the crown, as a part of this serjeantry the serjeant would perform some service for the crown in return for a piece of land.  Serjeantries range from military service to being a butler for the crown to carrying letters for the crown.(19)
 
     In the eyre rolls, we get a glimpse of the crowns sport and how it interacted with the people of the area.  In Carter’s study, he only came across one such serjeantry in five eyres, and it was for keeping the king’s falcons.  But in the Oxfordshire eyre of 1241 we have five such serjeantries.  First we need to ask ourselves why do these serjeantries exist in such large numbers in this eyre?  We needn’t look far to the crown for a possible solution.  In 1236, the last eyre courts from were winding down in the shires.  In this same year, Henry III who had already declared his majority took the final step in removing the barons from the king’s council.  What we may be seeing are changes due to the new control over the crown since these serjeantries would be those that had been reported since the 1236 eyres.  But then again it could simply be mere coincidence.

     Of the five serjeantries, four are related to falconry and the fifth is related to the forests of the crown.  These serjeantries give us great insight into the dealings between the crown and the serjeants.  All five of them give the value of the land and describe what service is to be performed for that land.  The serjeantry for keeping the forest of Shotover and Stowood tells us the least.  Philip Mimekan was granted land worth £10 but gives us no insight into what the role a keeper of the forest plays.(20)

     The four serjeantries related to falconry give us far more information and reveal some interesting aspects of how sport interacted with the culture and society of thirteenth century England.  Of these four serjeantries they can be divide into two groups.  The first of these groups is those for keeping the crown’s falcons.  The first of these appears to be a new grant for keeping the king’s falcons.  This serjeantry was worth £8 and there is no other mention of Henry de la Wande in the eyre.(21)   The second case is quite fascinating, it is actually a transfer of a serjeantry for keeping the king’s falcons into holding the land “of the king in chief the manor of Over Worton by service of a pair of golden spurs”.(22)   The manor is worth £10 a year which is within rather close to the same value of the above mentioned serjeantry.  But the most fascinating aspect is that the service for this land appears to be transferring from being a serjeantry to being held for service as a knight.  The value of the land is only slightly less than the £15 that Edward I would declare as the minimum for those required to be knights in 1285.  This appears to be an example of using a serjeantry for sport from the crown to gain social standing.

     The second group of serjeantries for falconry are instances of raising birds.  In both cases it is implied that once the bird is grown that they will no longer be taking care of them, but there is no mention wether they do this over and over again or if the service is just a one time thing.  The first one is of Robert de Eleford.  He holds a sergeantry worth 20s. for raising a falcon.  He also holds a sergeantry for riding in the king’s army for 40 days at his own expense.(23)   Robert may also be trying to do something similar to what we saw above by using the crown’s sport to gain advantage and crown recognition.

     The second of these cases is also one that stands out from the records.  Once again it is for raising a bird but this time the serjeantry is being granted to a woman by the name of Beatrice Murdac.  Unlike with Robert de Eleford she is to raise a goshawk, which is a rather highly prized bird.(24)   The value of the land she was given was worth £10 and was given in the king’s gift.(25)   Who was Beatrice Murdac?  By examining the rest of the eyre we can glean various information about her life.  She was one of two children of Ralph Murdac, who was dead.  She was not married and had a sister named Alice who was married to Ralph Hareng and either her mother or stepmother was still alive.  Her and her sister Alice held several pieces of land together and they appear to be a decently wealthy family in the area.(26)   By examining other records more may be possibly gleaned.  But she definitely was a single woman land holder who was involved in the king’s sport and falconry.
 
Conclusion

     There is little doubt that the public records of England possess many references to sport within them.  John Marshall Carter proved it in his study and it has been re-proven in this study.  While the methodology was slightly different and the results of the study were slightly different both of them fit the records that were used.  I have shown that using qualitative techniques alongside quantitative techniques yields the greatest results from these records, Carter inadvertently did this, and that Carter’s study could have been greatly improved by taking a more systematic approach towards the individual records instead of just occasionally using one to prove a point.

     Carter’s idea of violence and sport doesn’t hold water with regards to these records.  Did violence interact with sport?  Definitely but to what extent we don’t know.  Without comparing these records to something that displays how frequent sport was in society we can’t make any relation.  Also Carter doesn’t look at the reason why the acts of violence were happening in each case and wether or not they really were acts of violence.

     There is still allot of work to do with sport in the public records of England.  Carter’s study and this study do nothing more than chip a little away of a huge iceberg of information.  From eyres and various crown pleas rolls to the pattent and close rolls of the crowns there is a plethora of sources that are out there waiting to be waded though systematically.
 

 Works Cited

Carter, John Marshall “Sport, Crime, and Peasants in Thirteenth  Century England” Canadian journal of history of sport, 19  (1988): 28-58.

Cooper, Janet. The Oxfordshire Eyre, 1241 (Oxford, Parchment  Limited, 1989).

Cummings, John. The Hound and the Hawk (New York, St. Martin’s  Press, 1988).

Darby, H.C. A New Historical Geography of England before 1600  (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1976).

Hoffman, Richard C. “Fishing for Sport in Medieval Europe: New  Evidence” Speculum, 60, no. 4 (Oct., 1985): 877-902.

Magoun, F.P., “Football in Medieval England and in Middle-English  Literature” The American Historical Review, 35, No. 1. (Oct.,  1929):  33-45.

Meekings, C. A. F. Crown Pleas of the Wiltshire Eyre, 1249   (Gateshead on Tyne: Northumberland Press, 1961).

Pollock, Frederick and Frederick William Maitland. The History of  English Law:Before the Time of Edward I, vol. 1  (Irthlingborough, Woolnough Bookbinding, 1998).
 

NOTES

For the eyre cases after the first reference the eyre name will be used instead of the translator’s name.  And instead of page numbers the references will be to case numbers.

    1  Magoun, F.P., “Football in Medieval England and in Middle-English Literature” The American Historical Review, 35, No. 1. (Oct., 1929):  33-45.
    2  Carter, John Marshall “Sport, Crime, and Peasants in Thirteenth Century England” Canadian journal of history of sport, 19 (1988):28-58.
    3    The idea of defining sport is at its base problematic.  Many sport historians including Dr. Carter have stated that the base idea of sport is a as an anti-thesis of work.  While as a theoretical base this works Carter belives when placed into actual use it is lacking.  According to Carter time, society and class change the face of the conept of sport,  because the definition of work changes.  He uses the knightly class in particular in his book Sports and Pastimes in the Middle Ages to show how in the medieval period many activities of this class are both sport and could be considered work.  The difference he misses is that many of those things are not required for the knightly class to make thier living.  While tournaments help prepair a knight for war they are not required to make it and tournaments are not inthemselves war and therfore not work.  The theoretical idea of sport as the anti-thesis of work has another problem which is far more important to these studies.  Some things that are defined as being sport are also a form of work.  Often there is little or no distinction made between the two especially in the public records of 13th century England.
    4  Meekings, C. A. F. Crown Pleas of the Wiltshire Eyre, 1249 (Gateshead on Tyne: Northumberland Press, 1961).  Case 36.
While Carter does not list this case he does mention the occupations of every case he uses in his study.  This case is of a huntsman.  Carter mentions one in his study for Wiltshire and there are only 2 listed in the Eyre.  The other is of a murder case that has no visible relavance to this study.
    5  Carter, 42
    6  Carter, 42
    7  Carter, 44
    8  Cooper, Janet. The Oxfordshire Eyre, 1241 (Oxford, Parchment Limited, 1989), xi-xii
    9  Cooper, xii-xiii
    10  The role of fishing in western society is difficult.  It is often a comercial activity but also becomes an activity of sport at some point.  It is easier to include it for future refererence for those studing fishing or sport.  It will be discussed more fully later.
    11  Darby, H.C. A New Historical Geography of England before 1600 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1976), 141
    12  These records are questionable as to sport.  They were included because Carter includes atleast one such case which involves both a man and a woman drowing in a river.
    13  Hoffman, Richard C. “Fishing for Sport in Medieval Europe: New Evidence” Speculum, 60, no. 4 (Oct., 1985): 877-887
    14  Refering to a non-noble.
    15  Oxfordshire, case 606
    16  Oxfordshire, case 861
    17  Oxfordshire, case 950
    18  Wiltshire, case 148
    19  Frederick Pollock and Frederick William Maitland. The History of English Law:Before the Time of Edward I, vol. 1 (Irthlingborough, Woolnough Bookbinding, 1998), 282-284
    20  Oxfordshire, case 981
    21  Oxfordshire, case 860
    22  Oxfordshire, case 880
    23  Oxfordshire,case 931
    24  Cummings, John. The Hound and the Hawk (New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1988), 193
    25  Oxfordshire, case 930
    26  Oxfordshire, cases 104,367,506,642,695