For its ultimate development in Britain see Forest Law, where also the distinction between beasts of forest or venery, beasts of chase and beasts and fowls of warren is explained.
Thus beasts of forest (the "five wild beasts of venery") were the hart, the hind, the hare, the boar and the wolf.
William Twici, indeed, who was huntsman-in-chief to Edward Fox II., and who wrote in Norman French a treatise on hunting, 6 mentions the fox as a beast of venery, but obviously as an altogether inferior object of sport.