OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH the wolf in ancient times was not always difficult. The Venerable Bede O (673-735), an Anglo-Saxon monk and scholar, was the first to write about wolves in Britain. In a description of ‘Anderida’, or Ashdown Forest in Sussex, he observed its landscape to be “All but inaccessible and the resort of large herds of deer and of wolves”.
When Aelfric, the Abbot of Eynsham, wrote his colloquy more than a millennia ago, he too was relaxed in advising that it was ever the shepherd’s lot to “drive […] sheep to their pasture, and in the heat and in cold, stand over them with dogs, lest wolves devour them”.
Though there are no references to wolf hunting in Anglo-Saxon documents, when William the Conqueror defeated Harold at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, his triumph brought a new order to the country and hunting was elevated to the most noble of recreations. Wolves as adversaries, were, along with wild boar and deer, protected by the ‘forest laws’ for the pleasure of royals and aristocracy. Designed by the Normans to reportedly “leave the English nothing but their eyes to weep with”,
