Gentlemen of the marsh

In the beginning, wildfowling was regarded not as a sport, but as a means of filling hungry bellies. When, in 1621, Gervase Markham published the first book on the subject, he titled it Hunger’s Prevention: Or the whole Arte of Fowling by Water and Land.

While the majority of the book’s 17 chapters are devoted to hawking, netting and liming, there is one important chapter on shooting. It is not the sort of shooting that we would recognise today, for the firearms of the early 17th century were totally unsuited to killing birds in flight. Instead, the book describes creeping up to sitting fowl with a matchlock or snaphaunce and shooting them on the water.

Significantly, though, when Markham’s text was copied virtually word for word in 1686. Fowling had been elevated from a pot-filling pastime for the peasantry to a sport for gentlemen.