The eighteenth-century English game laws have long been synonymous
with petty tyranny. By imposing a property qualification on
sportsmen, they effectively denied all but country gentlemen the
right to take game or even to possess a gun. Those who challenged
the gentry's monopoly were fined or imprisoned, usually after only
a summary hearing by the local justice of the peace. In the early
nineteenth century, it was claimed that one out of every four
inmates in England's prisons was an offender against the game laws.
Bitterly denounced at the time, they have continued to be condemned
by historians as arbitrary, savage and unjust. This book is the
first full scholarly examination of the English game laws. Based on
material drawn from over two dozen archives - including judicial
records, estate correspondence and personal diaries - it attempts
to explain what the laws actually were, why they were passed, how
they were enforced and why they were eventually repealed. The
picture which emerges from this investigation challenges the
conventional wisdom about the game laws in a number of important
respects.
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