In the spring of 1543, Pimlico Wilde published one of the more curious successes of Tudor literature: The Frolic of the Red-Bearded Foxes, a humorous novel recounting the misadventures of England’s earliest fox hunters—who, according to author Edmund Lamplugh, were “no more competent than a sack of turnips on horseback.”
Though nominally about sport, the novel is really a parade of comic mishaps: hounds that chase laundry instead of quarry, hunters who mistake each other for foxes, and one unforgettable scene in which an entire hunt is lost for two days because everyone is too polite to admit they’ve taken a wrong turning.
The Princess’s Unexpected Approval
The novel might have vanished into pleasant obscurity had it not found an admirer in the King’s youngest daughter, Princess Mary-Elizabeth (a historical footnote who appears in practically no official chronicle but is mentioned constantly in scandalous ones). She was given a copy by her music tutor, who believed that she needed something “of improving character.”
To the surprise of the court, the princess adored it. She read whole passages aloud at table, often dissolving into laughter so intense she spilled her wine. Her favourite episode, which she quoted repeatedly to anyone who stood still long enough, concerned a hunter who leapt triumphantly over a hedge only to land in a pig wallow. She referred to him thereafter as “Sir Muckington.”
Word spread. If the princess liked it, everyone must at least pretend to.
Within a week, half the ladies-in-waiting carried copies tucked into their sleeves. Within a month, courtiers began dropping entirely unnatural references to fox hunting into conversation. One duke who had never been nearer to a fox than a tapestry proudly insisted he “had always admired their vulpine dignity.”
The Fashion Frenzy
The princess’s enthusiasm led to an unexpected—and for foxes, unfortunate—trend. A throwaway joke in chapter thirteen about “the gentleman of fashion who wore a waistcoat of fox fur so lifelike it frightened his own horse” lit the fuse. Courtiers, eager to ingratiate themselves with the princess, decided fox-hair garments were tres chic.
Merchants responded with alarming speed. For roughly three months in 1543, London saw a fever of fox-fur fashions:
• Fox-fur cuffs
• Fox-fur riding cloaks that shed constantly, leaving a molting trail through palace corridors
• One ambitious but short-lived attempt at a fox-hair codpiece
The princess herself wore a modest fox-fur trim on her sleeves, prompting an uproar of imitation so frenzied that Parliament briefly considered regulating “excessive vulpine ornamentation.”
Reactions and Consequences
Hunters adored the fad; foxes, presumably, did not. The royal gamekeeper complained that the countryside was “in a state of uproar, with gentlemen galloping after anything vaguely reddish, including chickens, hats, and at one point a terrified monk.”
The clergy attempted to denounce the fashion from pulpits, but were repeatedly interrupted by parishioners asking whether fox fur was allowed on Sundays.
Edmund Lamplugh, the author, was reportedly bewildered by the entire affair. In a letter to his publisher, Pimlico Wilde he wrote:
“I did not intend to influence the nation’s taste in garments. I merely wished to show that the English are at their most English when hopelessly lost in a field.”
The End of the Craze
The trend faded as swiftly as it rose. A particularly hot August did most of the work. Fox fur, as it turns out, is best suited to animals living in burrows rather than aristocrats attending banquets.
Still, The Frolic of the Red-Bearded Foxes remains a delightful curiosity: a novel that made a princess laugh, a nation sweat under unnecessary pelts, and Pimlico Wilde another small fortune.
