The Parlour
The parlour was the room where William Snawsell would have conducted business. Much of his time would have been spent sitting at his desk, using goose-feather quills to write on sheep-skin parchment. The Snawsells would have wanted anyone visiting this room to feel impressed by their wealth and status, and so it was filled with all sorts of valuable and exotic items. As well as objects of gold and silver, the Snawsells may have displayed imported goods carved from elephant ivory, or perhaps the quill of a porcupine.
Although wild deer had been hunted in Britain for millennia, it wasn’t until the medieval period that specific parks were established for hunting deer. The first of these are mentioned in Anglo-Saxon charters and were called ‘hays’. After the Norman Conquest in 1066, King William the Conqueror seized all the existing deer parks as royal property. He then went about establishing more, and by 1086 the Domesday Book records thirty-six of them. Initially, the kings held the exclusive right to hunt in these parks, but over time they allowed other members of the nobility and clergy to have their own parks. Hunting in a deer park was by invitation only, and poaching was severely punished. By the later Middle Ages, many deer parks had started a lucrative trade. If you were to give the park’s gamekeeper a written request, and a large sum of money, they would hunt a deer and bring you the carcass. You could then hang up the antlers and serve venison at feasts to impress your guests, despite never having been invited on a hunt.
Whether or not William Snawsell ever went hunting is unknown, but the association of hunting with wealth and nobility made it a popular subject for art. Falconry was becoming a popular sport at this time too, and the keeping of birds was considered a wealthy pastime. For the lower classes, bloodsports provided entertainment. Dogs were trained to fight captive bears and badgers, and especially aggressive cockerels were bred for cockfighting.
Horses played a crucial role in medieval warfare and courtly culture, with a warhorse being the most valuable and high-status animal a person might own. Medieval horses were generally smaller than modern breeds but they were versatile farm animals, able to pull a plough, a cart or a harrow. Although there were no horse ‘breeds’ in the modern sense, horses were bred to meet four main needs: military, hunting, riding and agriculture.
