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 , –.
. Lopez and Raymond , ; Bayley et al
, .
. Viner , ; cf Margeson , .
. Costen , appendix , .
. Bond , .
. Ibid, .
. Martin Ecclestone (pers comm ).
. Throughout the later Middle Ages the
almoner’s property remained separate from
the main manor, with its capital messuage
and demesne land presumably farmed
from there by a manager.
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