FENCING, ARCHERY AND FALCONRY

Fencing, Archery and Falconry is a day in mid-October at Millbrook, in the hunt country of Dutchess County: three fields set up with an instructor at each, members moving between them through the day, and the falconry flown in the late afternoon.

It exists so that members can take up three of the old arts of the field in one day, in country that still keeps them: the Millbrook Hunt meets on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays from mid-August through February.

Hunt Country

Millbrook lies in the Hudson Valley east of the river, some ninety miles north of New York, on land that was part of the Nine Partners Patent of 1697, nearly a hundred and fifty thousand acres from the Hudson to the Connecticut border. George Brown, a New York banker, financed the Dutchess and Columbia Railroad in 1869, and its station was named after his Millbrook Farm; the village was incorporated in 1895. Charles Dieterich, a founder of Union Carbide, and Harry Flagler built estates there. Foxhunting was first recorded in the local papers in 1889, and the hunt was recognised in 1907; Oakleigh Thorne, its Master from 1910, hunted six days a week. Its staff wear scarlet, to be seen, and the field wears black.

Falconry is “the hunting of wild animals in their natural state and habitat by means of a trained bird of prey”. It may have begun in Mesopotamia, with accounts from about 2,000 BC, and in about 1250 the Emperor Frederick II wrote a book on the art of hunting with birds. The Boke of St Albans, of 1486, gave each rank its hawk: the gyrfalcon for a king, the peregrine for an earl, the goshawk for a yeoman, the sparrowhawk for a priest, the merlin for a lady. UNESCO inscribed falconry as part of the intangible heritage of humanity in 2010. The Harris’s hawk is flown for its temperament, and hunts in groups, which no other bird of prey has been seen to do. New York licenses its falconers by examination and a two-year apprenticeship; one of them puts their number at “about 250 to 300 licensed falconers in New York State, and less than 200 are active.”

Roger Ascham’s Toxophilus, of 1545, dedicated to Henry VIII, was the first book on archery written in English, and the King granted him ten pounds a year for it; a toxophilite is a lover of the bow. Late in the eighteenth century archery came back into fashion among the aristocracy. Sir Ashton Lever founded the Toxophilite Society in London on 3 April 1781, with the patronage of the Prince of Wales, and it became the Royal Toxophilite Society in 1847. The societies had “strict entry criteria and outlandish costumes”, and women shot in them. The Grand National Archery Society first met at York in 1844, and its rules were settled as the York Round, shot at three distances, the longest just under three hundred feet. The National Archery Association of the United States was organised in 1879.

“Fencing traces its roots to the development of swordsmanship for duels and self-defence.” The Amateur Fencers League of America was founded in 1891, and fencing has been one of the five sports in every modern Olympic Games since the first, in 1896.

The Day

One day at Millbrook, in mid-October, on ground taken for the day. The Court has no grounds of its own.

Three fields are set up, one for fencing, one for archery and one for falconry, with an instructor at each.

Members move between them through the day.

The falconry is flown in the late afternoon.

What Is Asked

Country attire. Nothing is published for a private day, and the Court dresses to the register of hunt country.

Nobody is pitched in the field.

The Places

The number of places and the sum are stated in the invitation.

Innisfree Garden, at Millbrook, made between 1930 and 1960, opens at weekends only after mid-October. The Court’s Driven Game Shoot follows later in the month.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.