About History: “By hook or by crook”

In the September edition of BBC History magazine Anatoly Liberman, professor at the University of Minnesota and author of An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology, wrote on the origin of the phrase “by hook or by crook”, meaning “to get something done, no matter how”. Although the rhyme’s derivation is far from clear, this has not stopped popular theorising. According to Professor Liberman, some people point to AD 1169, the year King Henry II invaded Ireland. This theory links the supposed landing sites of the Anglo-Norman expedition to Hook Head in Wexford and the nearby village of Crooke in Waterford. Inconveniently the complete lack of any source makes this etymological explanation hollow. To confuse matters, this theory also has been related to another commonly repeated suggestion concerning Oliver Cromwell. He is reputed to have said that the town of Waterford would fall ‘by Hook or by Crooke’, an allusion to landing his army at one of the aforementioned two villages of Hook Head and the nearby Crooke during the siege of the Irish town in 1649/50.

More theories…  A third suggestion, according to Phrasefinder (Martin, 2024), has it that the phrase derives from the career of the Sir George Croke (or Crook), a celebrated English judge in the reign of Charles I. He became popular for refusing to accept the legality of “Ship Money”, a tax imposed by the King without the consent of Parliament. It was thus commonly said that ship money “may be gotten by Hook [that is, by force], but not by Crook” (Martin, 2024).

The next suggestion centres on the aftermath of the Great Fire of London in 1666. In this version two mysterious surveyors named Hook and Crook are said to have been engaged in determining the rights of claimants whose properties had been destroyed. Yet, once again, there are no contemporary documents to support the claim. Interestingly, however, the link may have originated because Dr. Robert Hooke, an English scientist [1], architect and polymath, was instrumental in the rebuilding of London after the conflagration. Moreover, in partnership with Sir Christopher Wren the two men both designed The Monument to the Great Fire and the Royal Observatory Greenwich.

All these hypotheses are at odds with chronology. Professor Liberman states: “the idiom first surfaces in writing around 1380, and must have been coined at about that time – too late for Henry’s invaders and hopelessly early for [Crook, Cromwell or] the fire.” Even so, it is in 1390 that the first substantiated citation of the phrase appears in John Gower’s Confessio Amantis:

“What with hepe and what with croke they make her maister ofte winne.”

In this instance Gower is using “hepe”, the mediæval name for a curved bill-hook, and “croke” to denote false witness and perjury. So, while he was not using the modern form of the phrase, “it is clear that he was using the reference to hooks and crooks in the same sense that we do now” (Martin, 2024).

Mediæval origins  So, where might the idiom originate? According to Professor Liberman, a probable source may be found in the documented Mediæval practice of gathering wood for fuel. He offers the suggestion that providing it was not cut, people were permitted to enter forests and remove dead or fallen wood by hooked poles (the “hook” element) or with a crook. This same feudal custom was recorded in the 1820s by the English rural campaigner William Cobbett. The only significant difference in Cobbett’s version is that peasants were allowed to take from royal forests whatever deadwood they could pull down with a shepherd’s crook or cut with a reaper’s bill-hook [2].

There is one small problem and that concerns the “Forest Laws” imposed by King William I on England forbidding the cutting down of trees and regulating the gathering of fallen timber for firewood, the collection of berries or indeed anything growing within the forest. The Norman laws superseded the earlier Anglo-Saxon ones in which rights to the forest (not necessarily just woods, but also heath, moorland and wetlands) were not exclusive to the king or nobles but shared among the people (Woodbury, 2012). The Normans established that a “forest” in the Mediæval period was a legally defined area where the “beasts of the chase [deer & wild pig] and their habitats including the vert” were for the pleasure of the monarch [3]. In AD 1079, for example, the New Forest in southern England was set aside by William I as his right, primarily for hunting deer.

William’s Forest Laws established that taking wood from the forest and hunting in banned forest areas was a crime, the latter specifically known as poaching. Unsurprisingly, the laws were despised by the commonfolk as they were prevented from using the woodland to provide food, fuel and building materials. They were also banned from enclosing their land by fencing or other means, ostensibly to protect crops, as this restricted the hunt. Likewise, they could not use the timber from the woodland for building houses and were not allowed to hunt game, especially the king’s deer, to provide food for their families. For those living in the forest, they were explicitly not allowed to own dogs or a bow and arrows, and, as the “underwood” was also protected, commoners also faced a severe restriction on the availability of fuel. The punishments for breaking the laws could range from fines to, in the most severe cases, death. Repeat offenders, for example, were blinded or executed.

An aside  The penalty for hunting with a bow is said to have been the severing of the first two fingers of the right hand so the poacher could no longer draw his bow. This is probably an apocryphal story, however, in much the same way that the two-fingered salute or V sign reputedly originated from a gesture made by English longbowmen fighting at the Battle of Agincourt (1415). The two are seemingly linked as the latter urban myth follows similar logic in that it claims English archers captured by the French had their index and middle fingers cut off so that they could no longer draw their bows. The insinuation is that the two-fingered V-sign was used as both an insult and a display of defiance towards the French. But there are a couple of problems with this tale. Firstly, why go to the bother of only removing a couple of fingers when it would be far more effective to cut off the hand. Secondly, and most importantly, there are no written historical primary sources supporting the claim. The contemporary chronicler Jean de Wavrin did report King Henry V’s pre-battle speech mentioned the French were said to be threatening to cut off three fingers [not two] from captured bowmen. Yet, neither Wavrin or any other contemporary author reported that the threat was ever carried out after Agincourt or any other battle. Moreover, any surviving sources from the Hundred Years’ War period are surprisingly silent concerning a gesture of defiance. 

Enforcing the laws  The 12th- and 13th-centuries were the pinnacle for enforcement of the Forest Laws, where up to 1/3 of England, including whole counties, were subject to them. English king subsequently charged a fee for certain uses of the forest, generating a substantial income, which was increased by setting aside more expansive tracts of land. Accordingly, only moneyed landowners and the nobility could afford the right to hunt. Besides, the peasantry typically did not have the weapons, skills or, crucially, the time to hunt. So, to provide food for their families they devised other ways to bring meat to the table. Remember however, if found hunting (poaching), grazing their animals or even gathering firewood in the forest, England’s poor could be severely punished. For folk relying on the land to survive, the Forest Laws placed severe restrictions on their way of life. Unsurprisingly, the Norman laws were extremely unpopular since activities that had been allowed on the common land of Anglo-Saxon England had been made illegal. Yet, despite the risks, many who felt the Forest Laws were unfair simply broke them seeing their actions as more of a social crime. Indeed, it was not uncommon for local communities to simply not report people who hunted or collected firewood from the forest – whether “by hook or by crook”.

As the centuries passed, the penalties under the Forest Laws, specifically interference with the king’s deer and its food (“browse”), became less severe. Interestingly, the remnants of the mediæval legal structure policing the New Forest, including “Forest Rights”, are today administered by the Verderers Court. Anyone found breaking the policies and byelaws pertaining to the forest may still be prosecuted in accordance with UK legislation set out in The New Forest Acts of 1877, 1879, 1949, 1964, and 1970, and The Countryside Act 1968 Section 23. So, while variants of the Forest Laws remain with us, when the Mediæval customs fell out of use, the catchy phrase “by hook or by crook” survived.

Bon appétit! 

References:

BBC Bitesize, (2024), “Crime and punishment in medieval England, c.1000-c.1500: New crimes in Norman England”, Available online (accessed 18 September 2024).

City of London, (2024), “Robert Hooke”, The Monument website, Available online (accessed 4 September 2024).

Liberman, A. (2024), “Why do we say: by hook or by crook”, BBC History Magazine (September 2024), London: Immediate Media Company, p. 48.

 Martin, G., (2024), Phrasefinder: “By hook or by crook”, www.phrases.org.uk, Available online (accessed 20 September 2024).

Woodbury, S. (2012), “Forest Laws in the Middle Ages”, Available online (accessed 18 September 2024).

Endnotes:

1. Hooke also invented the microscope and was the first to visualise micro-organisms alongside many other contributions to scientific research.

2. Author’s emphasis.

3. The “vert” in this case is a late Middle English adjective for the flora or greenery. The term enters English via Old French from Latin viridis meaning “green”.