Hope’s The Compleat Fencing-Master
Sir William Hope’s seminal The Compleat Fencing-Master represents the first fencing manual published in Britain. First appearing in Edinburgh in 1687, it was written when the young Hope was just 27 years old. Though he would go on to publish eight books relating to small sword fencing and duelling (as well as at least one translation on horsemanship), this seminal text offers precious insight into the fencing master’s thought and strategy, and to this fascinating moment in Scottish history more generally.
William Hope (1660-1724), The Compleat Fencing-Master: in which is fully describ’d all the guards, parades and lessons belonging to the small-sword; as, also the best rules for playing against either Artists or others, with blunts or sharps. Together With Directions how to Behave in Single Combat on Horse-Back: Illustrated with Figures Engraven on Copper-Plates, representing the most necessary Postures... The third edition. London, W. Taylor, [1687]-1710.
See the complete description of this copy here.
Right away a note on the publication history of this early manual is necessary. We are currently offering the rare “third” edition of this famous work, the earlier editions being those of 1691 and 1692. In fact, this edition is a reissue of the real first edition, published as The Scots Fencing Master in 1687, but with a new title page. The entire rest of the book belongs to the 1687 edition, hence Hope’s preliminary address “To the young nobility and gentry of the Kingdom of Scotland.” Unsold copies of the 1687 edition were offered for sale with a new title after 23 years. In this edition, the first quire has eleven leaves because in the The Scots Fencing Master the title was printed on two leaves while here they are replaced by only one. The 1710 edition is not mentioned in the usual reference works, which tend to include only the first and second editions.
Hope’s manual is intended for both “artists”—that is, advanced swordsmen—and “ignorants”—those knowing nothing at all about this noble art, or those who fancy themselves highly able fencers but who rely mainly on force rather than skill. To both such groups Hope offers a wealth of information, carefully laid out and often wittily articulated.
The methods Hope advises in The Compleat Fencing-Master are principally those of the French and Italian schools of small sword fighting, but he also includes various examples of his own innovations and idiosyncrasies. This combination of tradition and its critique through deferral to lived experience exemplifies Hope’s general approach to teaching. Each of his works stresses technical and practical knowledge, and, following this first publication, theory, too. His own learning is likewise made explicit in each as he demonstrates a willingness to reconsider or further develop various points and ideas included in previous publications.
This pedagogical approach is further reflected in his decision to use a dialogue format, which, as he explains in the preliminary epistle, seems to offer the greatest potential for clarity and learning:
The Reason of my putting it in a Dialogue, and not in a continued Discourse, was that after I had thought what would be the easiest Method I could take, for to make those of the meanest Capacitie understand my meaning; (which is no small trouble) I found this of Dialogue in my opinion to be the best and plainest; First, Because young Beginners, or who ever it be, that is to peruse this Treatise, will understand by the Scholars Questions, the Description of the Lessons better then if I had only discoursed of them. Secondly, the Scholar in his Questions, bringeth in many things very pertinently, and useful to a Beginner, which had I used any other Method, could not have been brought in so to the purpose.
The dialogue, much admired for its “quaintness,” is accompanied by twelve quite charming folding engraved plates described with fondness by Egerton Castle in his important Schools and Masters of Fencing first published in 1885 as “amazingly naïve and grotesque.”
Having long been used primarily for militaristic purposes, fencing was reconsidered as a recreational activity around the fifteenth century. It was in Hope’s time, however, that its popularity as a sport really began to flourish, largely due to three major safety innovations: the “foil” (with a flattened tip), rules concerning the target area, and the wire-mesh mask. Although Hope’s 1692 work, The Fencing-master's Advice to His Scholar, explores this recreational value, his main concern remained safety and self defence.
These concerns are at the heart of his Scots-focused manual. One of Hope’s broader objectives was raising the status and awareness of fencing among his countrymen. In particular, he urges his countrymen to turn inward, as he writes in his epistle to the reader, to “enquire after fencing-masters, of whom we have very able ones, so that we need not be beholden to our neighbouring nations for the perfecting of our youth.” In doing so, the author wanted to promote a style of fencing that was less ritualistic and elegant, and more practical and effective, something that could be done by encouraging the broadsword and backsword systems popular in Scotland:
[A]lthough it be not taught with so good a grace as abroad, yet, I say, if a man should be forced to make use of Sharps, our Scots-play is farr before any I ever saw abroad, as for security; and the Reason why I think it so, is, because all French play … appeareth to the Eyes of the Spectatours to be a farr neater, & Gentiler way of playing then ours, but no man that understands what secure fencing is, will ever call that kind of play sure play.
In 1692, Hope was also the principal organiser behind the founding of “The Society of Swordsmen in Scotland,” which was established with the goal of regulating the practice, establish licensing for fencing-masters for teaching purposes, and promoting general safety, as Hope explained in a later work: “to Project, Reason, Conclude upon and Enact such Methods and Regulations, alwise consisting with our Laws and Acts of Parliament, as they (the members) shall find convenient for promoting the Art of the Sword; and particularly with full power to them to cognoice upon and determine all differences betwixt parties upon Points of Honour, for the more effectual preventing of duels.”
To this latter point, Hope led the drafting of a “Court of Honour” bill that would limit the potential for duels. However, as Castle pointed out, despite great efforts to deliver the bill draft to a member of Parliament and have it presented before the House, the House was, at the time, deeply preoccupied with “affairs of the greatest consequence, particularly that of the union of the two Kingdoms.”
This momentous period in Scottish and English history is the general reason given for the title change from The Scots’ Fencing-Master to The Compleat Fencing-Master: the English did not generally look favourably on the Scots, and Hope, an ever-shrewd businessman, readily re-titled his work to negate this most obvious national reference.
Despite this evasion, Hope was clearly interested in cultivating a Scottish art of fencing. Moreover, as Alexander Will points out, his interest in and approach to doing so offer a fine example of the burgeoning Scottish Enlightenment. After a tumultuous century, Scotland—home of such influential figures as Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Adam Fergusson, Thomas Reid, and Adam Smith—would become a centre—perhaps the centre—of a new philosophical and intellectual current that emphasized human reason and logic developed especially through the questioning of tradition and experiential learning.
Hope predates this cultural flourishing, living instead through a tumultuous period of darkness characterized by great violence, political and religious strife, and economic hardship that laid the foundations for the coming “light.” Nevertheless, as Will observes, Hope’s works offer an early testament to such Enlightenment ideals: “[Hope] employed early scientific methods when developing his school of swordplay, reflected on the social implications of fencing, introduced the notion of “sport for better health” into early modern fencing, and sought to institutionalise fencing in order to curb violence. As a whole this reflects the mindset of the early Enlightenment as it started to flourish in Hope’s native Scotland during his lifetime.” (A. Will, “The Hanging Guard: William Hope’s (1660-1724) Invention of Self-defence and the Spirit of Enlightenment,” p. 105.)
It was perhaps this foundational character that attracted the attention of the Scottish bookman John Whitefoord MacKenzie (1794-1884), the former owner of the copy we are currently offering. Mackenzie was a prominent Edinburgh lawyer and antiquarian, as well as a founding member of the Percy Society—"the first of the British scholarly and antiquarian societies devoted exclusively to the preservation and printing of English literary texts.” (M. P. Kuczynski, “John Whitefoord Mackenzie and the Percy Society: Documents in the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University,” p. 293).
During his lifetime, Mackenzie gathered a fine collection of early Scottish books, most of which are distinguishable by his bookplate. His library was sold by Thomas Chapman & Son in two sales in 1886, and a good number of his books are now in the National Library of Scotland. From the first sale, it is evident that Mackenzie owned at least ten works by Hope, (see nos. 3603-3609), including three editions of this seminal manual—a testament to how, for Hope, the quill pen really did prove mightier than the (still very mighty and extremely skilfully handled) sword.
ESTC, no. N27837; Sotheby’s, Macclesfield sale, no. 3571; C.A. Thimm, A Complete Bibliography of Fencing and Duelling, London, 1896, p. 138; Gelli, pp. 495-95; Pardoel, 1282; N. Evangelista, The Encyclopedia of the Sword (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995); Mark Rector, Highland Swordsmanship: Techniques of the Scottish Swordmasters (Union City, CA: Chivalry Bookshelf, 2001); M. P. Kuczynski, “John Whitefoord Mackenzie and the Percy Society: Documents in the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University,” The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 98, no. 3 (September 2004); Richard Cohen, By the Sword Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai Warriors, Swashbucklers and Olympians (London: Simon and Schuster, 2010); E. Castle, Schools and Masters of Fence: From the Middle Ages to the Eighteenth Century (London: Bell and Sons, 1885); A. Will, “The Hanging Guard: William Hope’s (1660-1724) Invention of Self-defence and the Spirit of Enlightenment,” Acta Periodica Duellatorum 8, no. 1 (2020).
How to cite this information
Julia Stimac, “Hope’s The Compleat Fencing-Master,” PRPH Books, 28 October 2020, https://www.prphbooks.com/blog/compleat-fencing-master. Accessed [date].This post is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.