The Antiquaries Journal, , , pp – LADIES HUNTING: A LATE MEDIEVAL DECORATED MIRROR CASE FROM SHAPWICK, SOMERSET Eleanor Standley* This paper examines a later medieval small find excavated from Shapwick, Somerset. A multidisciplinary approach is taken to understand the use of the decorated object, identified as a mirror case, and its symbolic meaning as a possible love token. Comparisons are made with other finds of metal mirror cases from mainland Britain and ivory examples from the Continent with depictions of hunting scenes. The imagery of hunting and hawking is discussed in relation to contemporary material culture in order to identify the socio-cultural significance of this activity and the mirror case. In , excavations north of Bridewell Lane in the village of Shapwick, Somerset, revealed a history of occupation from the twelfth to the nineteenth centuries, including a possible later medieval building, with contemporary and later pits and ditches. The site has been ploughed within living memory and from the topsoil came a damaged fragment of copper-alloy sheet from a circular object, mm in diameter (fig ). Its crude repoussé decoration depicts the hind legs of a horse partly overlaid with folds of flowing material, probably the outer garment of a woman riding side-saddle. The precise identification of this object remains in doubt. Since no mirror glass, backing case or ‘blacking’ survives, the decorated sheet may have been a decorative attachment. Either way this is not a common find from a rural medieval site. Although over a hundred metal mirror cases are known from Britain, . per cent are recorded from the Portable Antiquities Scheme database and are not from archaeological contexts Fig . Fragment of the decorated mirror case from Shapwick; scale :. Drawing: after Viner , fig ., no. A * E Standley, Department of Archaeology, Durham University, South Road, Durham DH LE, UK. E-mail: <e.r.standley@durham.ac.uk>. A LATE MEDIEVAL DECORATED MIRROR CASE  (fig ). Most have simple punched decoration; only twelve cases have raised or openwork decoration representing animal, floral or figurative motifs like the Shapwick example – seven of these are from London, one from Wormingford, Essex, one from Leicestershire and another three from Perth. All are stylistically or contextually dated to the thirteenth or fourteenth century, with the exception of the Leicestershire example, which is thought to be post-medieval. The distribution of known cases, even allowing for vagaries of bias, implies that the use of mirror cases was more common than the total number of excavated finds currently suggests. Those from archaeological contexts are predominantly from urban centres (from a pit located in the main street of the medieval town of Monmouth, for example) but whether medieval towns led fashions for dress accessories like these is not easily established when the number of finds so far recorded is so low. Fig . The distribution of medieval mirror cases in mainland Britain, Shapwick being marked ‘S’. Sixteen have been recovered from London (L), five from Winchester (W) and three from Perth (P). Monmouth is marked ‘M’. Map: created using Strategi® data  THE ANTIQUARIES JOURNAL Mirror cases in ivory offer further comparanda. Three examples attributed to a Continental origin (probably Paris) depict equestrian scenes and a fourth depicts a highstatus hawking couple. The first is dated c – and illustrates a man and woman, both on horseback and carrying hawks, surrounded by leafy trees and followed by a falconer or beater (fig ). The second also depicts a couple on horseback, but here only the male carries a hawk while his partner carries what is thought to be a three-tailed whip. They, too, are set in a woodland scene, accompanied by two falconers or beaters and two dogs. The third example is more elaborate: both riders carry hawks and are accompanied by another male rider with a lure and a beater who blows a horn. In all three equestrian images the women are depicted as riding side-saddle and the material folds of their outer garments flow over their bodies and the torsos of their mounts. Two metal mirror cases from the London collection are associated with hunting. An incomplete case found in spoil at Billingsgate shows a stag being attacked by two hunting dogs. The second – a fragment of a repoussé decorated silver gilt disc – was found unstratified with a group of mainly late fourteenth-century objects. Its decoration is far crisper than the Shapwick find but the theme is reminiscent. The hindquarters of a stallion are depicted, together with part of the long outer garment of the rider against a stylized foliage surround. The best interpretation of the decoration on the Shapwick fragment, then, is as a female equestrian scene, most likely a lady hawking on horseback. Such a scene would have been familiar to the contemporary elite eye from medieval illustration and literature. This hawking imagery was associated with courtly love and may have symbolized the search or hunt for love (fig ). Falconry was often used as a sexual metaphor, and the process of training a hawk plays on the idea of ‘training’ a woman in a relationship. The image of the hawk may also have served as a sign of protection, or Fig . A fourteenth-century ivory mirror case back. Photograph: © The Trustees of the British Museum Fig . Line drawing of the poet Werner von Teufen embracing a lady with a hawk. Detail from Codex Manesse, fol r. Drawing: drawn by the author after <http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg. de/diglit/cpg/> ( May ) A LATE MEDIEVAL DECORATED MIRROR CASE  as a messenger between two lovers. The hawk was repeatedly used in medieval literature as a romantic symbol for – or even a physiological extension of – a knightly hero. Indeed, the iconography on the Shapwick mirror case may reveal one of its life uses – a romantic token bestowed during the early stages of a courting couple’s relationship. The image would then express a message of love and protection from a male lover, while the female rider depicts the courted woman. A small mirror was easily carried about the person and it would have made a suitable love token, just as other trinkets and items of clothing did in the later and post-medieval periods. On the one hand the case would have conjured memories of a loved one and delivered a reassuring sense of protection and, on the other, overtly signalled to admirers and others the romantic intentions of its user. Using the mirror in company would have drawn attention to the face – and more specifically the mouth or eyes – which may have been a suggestive and engaging act. Thus its use might have given off ambiguous signals, being a symbolic message of love, protection and boundaries that should not be crossed as well as a flirtatious communication. Hawking in medieval times was also associated, significantly, with those of high status in society. Hunting and hawking were integral parts of a knight’s or prince’s education and the magnificent display and physical exertion of the hunt underlined the aristocratic dignity and status of noble men, qualities that could also be displayed by noble women. The high-quality seal matrix of Elizabeth, Lady of Sevorc, for example, can be dated on stylistic grounds to the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century and shows an equestrian lady wearing a hat and high-collared cloak riding a horse sidesaddle. In her right hand she holds a hawk and in her left, the leg and claws of a bird. Around the edge, the Lombardic legend names Elizabeth, who has been identified as Isabella of Hainault, daughter of Philip of Hainault and second wife of Arnold V, Lord of Oudenarde (d ) (fig ). Several earlier and contemporary Continental European examples with similar decorative themes can be cited. Among them are the seals of Mabilia de Gattona, dated to the thirteenth century; of Adèle, wife of the Count of Soissons, dated ; of Alix or Adelaide of Brabant (widow of Henry III, Duke of Brabant and Lotharingia), dated ; and that of Jeanne, Countess of Flanders and Hainault (daughter of Baudouin IX), dated . The only known English seal depicting an equestrian lady is that of Johanna de Stuteville, dated to . Johanna is depicted riding side-saddle but, instead of a hawk, carries her family shield. The imagery on these items strongly suggests that while some women merely spectated or received the quarry once the hunt was over, other ladies of high status could be active participants in hawking parties. Moreover, the symbolism of that activity was well understood as indicating status and authority. One illustration from Queen Mary’s Psalter (c –) shows two female equestrians and a male riding behind watching a hawk take a duck flushed from the water (fig ); another shows two women crane hawking. In the fourteenth-century Codex Manesse a couple are depicted on horseback, the man amorously embracing a lady who is holding a hawk on her gloved hand (see fig ). At the courtly picnic, complete with hunting dogs and hawks/falcons depicted on the lost fifteenth-century painting Garden of Love at the Court of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy (–), a couple on horseback (the lady riding sidesaddle) are both pictured holding hawking birds. Other paintings or drawings of females riding side-saddle with hawks include an illustration of Mary of Burgundy in her Book of Hours, produced after her death in a hunting accident, a noble lady riding in an early sixteenth-century falconry party of the Master of the Grimani Breviary, a  THE ANTIQUARIES JOURNAL Fig . Line drawing of the impression from the seal matrix of Isabella of Hainault. The legend reads + S. ELYZABETH DOMINE DE SEVORC. Drawing: drawn by the author after Ellis and Cherry , pl XXXIX, c Fig . Line drawing of a hawking party. Detail from Queen Mary’s Psalter, British Library, Royal  B VII, fol : Drawing: drawn by the author after Oggins , fig  fifteenth-century Italian lady hunting partridges and a fifteenth-century illumination from an Italian Treatise on Falconry and Hunting, which incorporates different aspects of hawking waterfowl, such as a lady riding side-saddle. The imagery of women hunting, as these examples amply illustrate, was pan-European. Women also appear out hunting in medieval literature. In the fifteenth-century poem La Chasse, by Jacques de Brézé, a stag chase is organized and led by ‘Madame’, identified as Princess Anne de Beaujeu, daughter of Louis XI. Similarly, female hunters are described in John Coke’s Debate Betwene the Heraldes () where he states: ‘we have also small parkes made onely for the pleasure of ladyes and gentylwomen, to shote with the longe bowe, and kyll the sayd beastes’. He records too the types of hawk used A LATE MEDIEVAL DECORATED MIRROR CASE  by ladies: ‘goshawkes, and sparehawkes for ladyes, beyng the cause of pleasure, and hawkyng’. In the twelfth century, John of Salisbury confessed that ‘the inferior sex excels in the hunting of birds’, while in the late thirteenth-/early fourteenth-century poem, Sir Orfeo, a party of sixty ladies, each with a falcon, is described as riding beside a river. Riverbanks were known to be ‘a good haunt / Of mallard, of heron, and cormorant’ and the main prey of falcons and hawks were cranes, herons and ducks. Finally, when King Modus stresses the participation of ladies hawking during the fourteenth century, he explains the term espreviers a dames (‘ladies’ hawks’) as ‘hawks which carry their dead prey back to the hand of their bearer’. This brief summary of the medieval iconography of female hawkers suggests that the imagery of the Shapwick object might have appealed to a member of the nobility or rising bourgeoisie familiar with vernacular romance. The crude reproduction of the image and the use of base metal suggest a generalized image of a lady hawking, rather than a specific noblewoman. Its date of manufacture can be estimated as being in the thirteenth or fourteenth century on the basis of similar metal and ivory mirror cases and seals. It is possible that the case is English, but any glass it contained might have been imported. Among the commodities en route from Bruges to London confiscated at Sluis in  were ‘ tuns’ of mirrors, and the cargo of a ship arriving in London in  (probably from the Low Countries) included , mirrors. Another late medieval hunting-related find came from the same ploughsoil context, and consisted of a scale pan with a central stamp depicting a stag (fig ). Flat pans such as this were used in balances to weigh coins, precious stones or metal but were not usually used for domestic tasks such as weighing flour. The stag was a common quarry of the medieval hunt and a symbol of St Hubert, the patron saint of forest workers, furriers, hunters, hunting, huntsmen, trappers and makers of precision instruments. As for associated Shapwick residents, a terrier drawn up by the Benedictine house at Glastonbury Abbey in  lists John Walle, a free tenant, as the occupant of a dwelling (Church Cottage) on one side of Bridewell Lane while the property directly to the north was in possession of the monastery’s almoner. Both are specifically mentioned in relation to rights on Shapwick’s lowland peat moor, which included the digging of turves ‘and right of hunting in the aforesaid moor as far as the Pinfold in Strete without allowance for the catch’. Many monastic houses claimed rights of free warren, which permitted them to hunt small game (especially hare and wildfowl) and vermin on their estates. Dogs were used in the hunting of hares and foxes, while hawks were used to pursue wildfowl and small mammals. Shapwick Moor was the perfect habitat for waterfowl such as mallard, crane, heron and waders, and the almoner would have been Fig . Balance scale pan with stag stamp from Shapwick; scale :. Drawing: after Viner , fig ., no. A  THE ANTIQUARIES JOURNAL responsible for arranging local hunts for the abbey’s guests, both lay and ecclesiastical, but whether Walle held some responsibility for hunting on behalf of the almoner cannot now be demonstrated. Perhaps the proximity of his dwelling to that of the almoner is suggestive. If ownership and occupation of land in the village remained stable between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, as seems likely, then previous inhabitants may also have hunted here. Either the almoner or his local manager, or possibly a free tenant like John Walle, might have included in their retinue a young woman who lost this courting gift. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am enormously grateful to Christopher Gerrard for his constructive comments and access to the finds from Shapwick. I wish to thank Abby Antrobus, Pam Graves, Martin Ecclestone and, for their help with illustrations, Jeff Veitch and Alejandra Gutiérrez. I also wish to acknowledge the encouraging and helpful comments made by the two referees who approved this paper for publication in the Journal. NOTES . The excavations discussed here were located in Field , trench B, north of Bridewell Lane (/B) (Gerrard a, –). . Ibid. . Viner , . . A black-lead coating is often seen on other mirrors and their casing, being used to improve the mirror assemblage: Bayley et al , ; Egan and Pritchard , . . This distribution map of mirror cases was created using the Portable Antiquities Scheme’s database, <http://finds.org.uk/finds/> ( May ), and published material (see note ). . For common punched decoration see Egan and Pritchard , fig  no. ; Bayley et al ; Margeson ; AllasonJones ; Butler , , fig  no. ; Bayley ; Biddle and Hinton , ; Krueger , –; Egan and Pritchard , –; Krueger , ; Mills , ; Hall and Owen ; Spencer , ; Redknap , –, pls –, fig ; Egan , , pl  nos –. . Redknap , –, pls –, fig . . The workshop that produced these ivories, and others, has been dated to c – and placed in Paris, or northern France: de Chamerlat , ; Randall  and . . British Museum, M&ME .–., <http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/hi . . . . . . ghlights/highlight_objects/pe_mla/i/ivory_ mirror_back_with_hawking.aspx> ( May ). My thanks to the British Museum for permission to use this image. Egan and Pritchard , fig . Barnet , –. Museum of London acc. no. ./; Bayley et al , ; Egan and Pritchard , . Egan and Pritchard ,  no. . Cummins , , –; in the Codex Manesse the poet and knight, thought to be Herr Werner von Teufen, is depicted in a courtly love scene while out hawking (Codex Manesse, fol r: Ruprecht-KarlsUniversität Heidelberg nd, <http://digi. ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/cpg/> ( May )). In Fletcher’s comedy, The Maid in the Mill (licensed ; published in the first folio, ), a man is criticized for not pressing his amorous case: ‘If you had play’d your part Sir, And handled her as men do unman’d hawks, Cast her, and mail’d her up in good clean linen, And there have coy’d her, you had caught her heart-strings’ (Johnson et al , ). The term ‘unmanned’ plays on the idea of the girl being virginal and untrained, to cast is to let the hawk loose to fly, and to wrap the bird in cloth as part of training insinuates catching the girl between the sheets: Williams , . A LATE MEDIEVAL DECORATED MIRROR CASE . Dalby , xxxi; Bec ,  no. ; Cummins , . . Dalby , xxxi; Menéndez Pidal , –; Cummins , –. . Gifts of money, metal and clothing were principal tokens in the early stages of relationships during the th century: Green ; O’Hara , , table . . Probate material from Kent revealed that metal gifts and trinkets made up . per cent of the total numbers of tokens from  to : O’Hara , , table . . Haskins , , ; Dalby , xix–xxviii; Thiébaux , ; López de Ayala , . . Ellis and Cherry , . . Birch ,  no. . . Demay , no. . . Ibid, no. . . Ibid, no. . . Ellis and Cherry , ; Alexander and Binski , no. . . Baillie-Grohman ,  (cited in Cummins , ); Thiébaux , . . Oggins , fig . . See note . . Oggins , pl . . Cummins , pl . . Oggins , pl . . Cummins , pl . . de Chamerlat , ; Cummins ,  pl . . de Brézé  (cited in Thiébaux , –); Cummins , . . The English Herald answers: ‘. Item, we have almaner of bestes salvages that you have, and more plente of them to chase; as hartes, hyndes, buckes, does, robuckes, and wylde bores … . In lyeu whereof we have foxes, hayres, conys, and otters, in moste habundaunce; we have also small parkes made onely for the pleasure of ladyes and gentylwomen, to shote with the longe bowe, and kyll the sayd beastes’ (Coke , ). . Ibid, . . John of Salisbury , . . Bliss , –; Oggins , . . Tilander , . . Nicholas , –. . 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