The Rabbit and the Medieval East Anglian Economy
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/ The Rabbit and the Medieval East Anglian Economy By MARK BAILEY Abstract The rabbit was a rare beast in medieval England, and much sought after for both its meat and its fur. This investigation plots the early history of commercial rabbiting in East Anglia, and its transition from a low output concern to a growth industry in the later Middle Ages. The development of the rabbit-warren into a highly lucrative source of income is explained in terms of the changing economic and social conditions after ~he Black Death, and the more intensive management of warrens by landlords. The occupational spin-offs from rabbiting, and the social implications of poaching in a region where resistance to the feudal order was endemic, are also explored. Final consideration is given to the economic impact of the rabbit on areas of poor soil, and its ability to compensate for their inherent disadvantages in grain production. A HISTORICAL study of a creature why were the courts so determined to stop so manifestly commonplace as the them? rabbit might initially appear In fact, this modern reputation belies uninteresting, for it is the unusual wlaich historical experience, and for much of its most readily excites intellectual curiosity. history the rabbit has remained a rare and The rabbit is still regarded as prolific, highly prized commodity. The animal is destructive, and of little value, despite its not indigenous to the British Isles, unlike terrible suffering under the myxomatosis the hare, but was deliberately introduced virus since the I95os. Yet this modern view from France or its native western Mediter- is not consistent with the severe attitude ranean by the thirteenth century." Its value adopted by manorial courts towards lay both in its meat and fur, and as one poachers in the Middle Ages. An example seventeenth-century commentator noted, from a court held at Westwood near Dun- 'no host could be deemed a good house- wich (Surf) in I442 illustrates the point. In keeper that hath not plenty of these at all the autumn of that year, three Augustinian times to furnish his table'. 3 Fur was used canons fi'om Blythburgh Priory had been as clothing as well as on clothing, and caught poaching rabbits with their own, although neither the most fashionable nor specially reared, greyhounds, a flagrant dis- valuable, rabbit fur was increasingly popu- play of the increasing worldliness of lar from the thirteenth centuryY religious orders. The outraged court Yet initially the rabbit found the English officials fined them the substantial sum of climate inhospitable and required careful 46s 8d, and also recorded that the operation 2 Tlle rabbit was apparently indigenous to Britain in a previous had the express knowledge and support of interglacial but subsequently became extinct, A M Tittensor, The Rabbit Warren at l,Vest Dean near Chichester, published no less a person than the Prior himself.' If privately, t986, no page ntunbers. For its reintroduction by the the medieval rabbit was valueless, why did Normans, see E M Veale, 'The Rabbit in England', Ag Hist Rev, V, t957, pp 85-90. An excellent general study of the such illustrious men take up poaching and animal is J Sheail, Rabbits and their History, Newton Abbot, 197x. See also O Rackham, A History of the Countryside, t986, * This study is concerned with Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and P 47. Suffolk. 1 am grateful to Edward Miller and Duncan Bythell for 3 F l-lervey (ed), Reyee's Breviary qfSuffolk, t9o2, p 35. reading and commenting on an earlier draft of this paper. 4 E M Veale, The English Fur Trade in the later Middle Ages, t Ipswich and East Suffolk Record Office, HA3o:3t2/195. Oxford, x966, chap x. I Ag Hist Rev, 36, 1, pp I-2o THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW rearing and cosseting inside specially cre- granted the sole right to kill the beasts of ated warrens. 5 For the next five centuries warren- which basically consisted of the the vast majority of England's rabbit popu- pheasant, partridge, hare and rabbit - lation lived protected within these con- within a specified area. Hence the right to fines, and not until the eighteenth century keep and kill rabbits was the exclusive did it successfully colonize a much wider privilege of the owner of free-warren and area. As Sheail writes, 'the agricultural it was therefore illegal for anybody else to revolution made it possible for the rabbit attempt to do so. Free-warren was conse- as a species to survive in a feral state' and quently a valuable privilege, jealously provided a launch pad for its demographic guarded by its owner, and charters for explosion, an explosion which ultimately most East Anglian villages had been undermined its economic value. 6 Even in granted by the I28OS. 8 the seventeenth century the rabbit was still There is obviously an important distinc- regarded as an important cash crop and, tion to be made between the warren in its in some areas, as a form of agricultural legal and its practical senses. In modern improx/ement. 7 In the Middle Ages rabbit- usage the rabbit-warren refers to a piece warrens represented almost the sole source of waste ground on which wild rabbits of supply for rabbits and their scarcity burrow, but in the Middle Ages it specifi- made them a valuable and fiercely guarded cally meant an area of land preserved for commodity. Indeed, the collapse of the the domestic or commercial rearing of grain market in the later fourteenth and game. Furthermore the sites of medieval fifteenth centuries encouraged some land- warrens were selected according to strict lords to develop their warrens as an alterna- topographical criteria and not at random. tive source of income, to the extent that The modern rabbit has developed a resili- rabbiting can be classed as an unlikely but ence to the damp British climate, but still successful late medieval growth industry. prefers to avoid moisture and hence bur- rowing in water-retentive clays and loams. Its medieval predecessor felt this aversion I more keenly, for the distribution of war- Throughout the Middle Ages the right to rens in East Anglia corresponds closely hunt and kill any beast or game was a with areas of dry and sandy soil (see Map special privilege granted by the king, so I). Landlords also sought slopes for colon- that all hunting was carefully controlled ization, as a gradient facilitated both drain- and restricted. Hunting in the extensive age and the dispersal of burrowed soil. 9 royal forests was the privilege of the king Significantly the largest concentration of alone, but outside these areas the Crown warrens was in Breckland, a region of was prepared to sell exclusive hunting undulating heathland, low rainfall and rights by means of a charter of free-warren. deep, porous sands, in other words an ideal In effect, the recipient of this charter was habitat for the rabbit. In I563 a lease of 5 Rackham, op tit, p 47. Brandon warren in the heart of Breckland 6 J Sheail, 'Rabbits and Agriculture in post-Medieval England', noted it 'is very Wyde and Large but of Jnl Hist Geo~, IV, 1978, p 355. See also Sheail, op tit, 1971, pp 9-Io and 3 I-2. very Baren Soyle neverthelesse very good 7 Sheail, op tit, 1978, p 349. Sheail's article considers the revived for brede of Conyes'. '° interest in rabbit rearing in the early modern period, and attempts to correct the 'impression that rabbit-warrens were always inimical to progressive land management', p 344. Indeed, 8 The Hnndred Rolls nominate the owners of free-warren charters the value of some warrens suggests that commercial rabbiting in most East Anglian villages. For the concept of free-warren could represent the optimum use of poor soils. Such arguments see Sheail, op tit, 197t, p 35 and C 1~, Young, The Royal Forests could be equally applicable to the medieval period, but no study qfMedieval Et~gland, Leicester, 1979, pp lo--i I and 46. of the fortunes of rabbit rearing in the Middle Ages has bitherto 9 Sheail, op dr, 1971, p 39. been attempted. Io PRO, E 31o.24/138. Sec below, n xo9. THE RABBIT AND THE MEDIEVAL EAST ANGLIAN ECONOMY 3 ° °°., . • ,° ° ° ..................... • °X ..... .°o° • ,° -°° • ° • , • ° ,, " X' ....... * ° ° ° ..... ° ° ° "° ° .........~ °. • °~ ...../°° ° ° ° ....... ° °° ° ° ° .... °- ° ° I° ° ° .... ° ° 4. ° ° I °.° ..... ° °° ..... o .... • °°° ..... ° ° ..... ° ° °.. • ° o°. • o° .° ° ° ° ° • o° ° ° ,°° • *°. i°°- ;,,/.,/ ............ • ° ° ° ° ° X .,:ix X 0 ,X°°°. ° , ...... :? I | 6 LIGHT SOILS FENLAND MAP I Documented Rabbit-warrens and Areas of Light Soil in East Anglia, I200--I540* *warrens marked are those mentioned in text The earliest warrens were founded inclusion in their warren in the I28OS." almost exclusively on heathland and per- Although most nineteenth-century war- manent pasture, although at Chippenham (Cambs) the Hospitallers bought out com- I I M Spufford, A Cambridgeshire Community: Chippenham from Settlement to Enclosure, Occasional Papers, Dept of Local His- mon rights on small pieces of arable for tory, Leicester University, XX, 1965, pp 22- 3. 4 THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW rens were enclosed by ditches and banks cunicularium was added to the charter.'6 The topped with gorse to restrict the move-: rabbit was a particularly favoured delicacy ment of predators, there is little evidence of the Abbot of St Edmunds who had a to indicate that this was widespread in the warren created at his country retreat in Middle Ages. At Lakenheath (Suft) a ditch Elmswell and at Long Melford (Surf), probably divided the west end of the war- whilst both West Acre and West Dereham ren from the village arable, but such Priories also established their own warrens examples are rare and most remained open nearby.