1575 Warning About Fox Extinction

 

In A Fox-Hunting Anthology: Selections from The Writers of the 18th, 19th and 20th CENTURIES (1928) edited by E. D. Cuming on page xiv of his introduction we read, when he refers to a squire-cum-'sportsman':

"He has his troubles, it is true ; scarcity of foxes is perhaps the worst ; it has been so for generations before his time ands is to be for generations after.  For which we have the evidence of Ralph Holinshed, his Chronicles, published 1575 : he says of fox and badger:-

   "'We have some but no great store -such is the scarcity of them here in England -so earnestly are the inhabitants bent to root them out, that except it had been to bear thus with the recreations of their superiors- it could otherwise have been chosen but that they should have been utterly destroyed by many years agone.' "

in The Experienc'd Huntsman by Arthur Stringer (Belfast, 1714)Stringer wrote:

"As to the Fox, he who lives in a Country where Foxes are plenty, ought fore several Reasons to hunt them: First, That the Fox is a more noble Chace than the Hare :  Secondly, That in Hunting the Fox, you do good to your self, to your Neighbours or Tenants, and to the Country in general, by killing such a Vermine as is a nuisance to the Neighbourhood where he frequents."

The question has to be how, if the number of Old fox types was very low to the point that they were almost extinct and therefore 'sport' was hard to get, did foxes survive?  Firstly, as Holinshed wrote; locals were forbidden to kill all the animals because they were stopping the Chace (hunt) of their 'betters'.  I think that based on all the works from that period gamekeepers began the task of protecting foxes and stabling them whilst keeping them wary of people -I detailed this in The Red Paper: Canids along with contemporary illustrations and guides given to keep and feed foxes until hunt season.  However, I doubt that this 'conservation' of foxes would have helped the species survive. I would hazard an educated guess that it was during the 16th century that foxes were caught in Europe and sent to England to "replenish the stock" -this certainly went ion into the early 20th century.

And no one must misunderstand here; the 'lords and masters' hunted foxes for 'fun' and 'pleasure' and so did the common people with the added bonus of collecting bounties for the animals they killed (again detailed in The Red Paper). Fun and profit and a good session in the local pub afterwards.

As was written in 1575 so was written in the 1700s and repeatedly throughout the 19th century. 'Sportsmen' and naturalists all noted the decline of foxes and that they were headed for extinction and do you know what the biggest fear they had? "If foxes vanish then what shall happen to our sport?" This was never about 'pest control' and the term "Vermin" simply referred to animals one could hunt and the older term was "creatures of the chace".  Everyone from villagers to the upper class contributed to the extinction of the Old fox.

Stringer shows his true colours but was not using the term "vermine" as anything but an animal to hunt and kill. A more "noble" creature to hunt because the fox cornered and about to be torn to pieces would put up a fight and the things these 'sportsmen' wanted was a long chase and a "good end" and we read about it over and over again -whether fox, wolf, coyote or jackal the 'sportsman' wanted that fight at the end and one Duke of Beaufort on a wolf hunting holiday in France did not want the cornered wolf set loose to chase again -he demanded that it was strangled in front of him. Not very sporting.  A hare, although classed as a creature of the chace/vermin could not put up a fight for its life -where was the sexual excitement for the huntsman in that? 

Yes, the element of sexual excitement was always noted  (if politely) in the past. Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson also stated that there was a degree of sexual excitement involved.

We saw the last of the Old fox types (Mountain, Hill and Cur) die out by the 1830s, a period at the height of the "Golden Age of Hunting" that saw many species go extinct and replacements brought in from Europe. 

Rather like the wild cats of England, Scotland and Wales surviving until falling into extinction it is possible that the Old types hung on through breeding with the New imported foxes that escaped the hunts.

We can, therefore, show that the first extinction of foxes in England hit in the 16th century and it is possible that Old fox types after that were ones caught and transported around the country to hunting estates -in the 19th century hunts in England sent Mountain foxes to Ireland as they were vanishing/vanished there.  Once they were finished off England imported as many Norwegian Mountain foxes as they could get as these were sturdier and even faster than the then gone British Mountain fox.

I have tried, along with my colleague LM, to unravel the true history of British foxes but the use of DNA would answer so many questions that are otherwise only educated speculation.

NB: I ought to note that many old fox and wild cat illustrations are found online and for sale but have been miscoloured. The people making money from colouring the prints and selling them have no knowledge of Old foxes and simply colour using modern photos -some taxidermists are also 'rejuvenating' fox taxidermy by bleaching out the original fur colour and applying dyes to make a totally inaccurate specimen. Lack of knowledge is destroying a lot of Old fox taxidermy.