Gentlemen and Poachers: The English Game Laws 1671-1831

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 offend...