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 ...

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