THE RABBIT OR CONY 185 



specifying hares, pheasants, and partridges. The above quotations 

 suggest absence, or at least scarcity. Between A.D. 1183-1 186, however, 

 "cuniculi" were casually named by Giraldus Cambrensis when writing 

 in Latin of the Irish Hare (see below, under Irish Hare, where the whole 

 passage is transcribed); and as shown above on p. 177, the fur or skin 

 was mentioned in 1200 (and Sir James Murray informs me that the 

 passage may well date from 1 175). Both references indicate that rabbits 

 were then well known, although not necessarily members of the British 

 fauna. The first undoubted record of their occurrence in Britain has 

 been supplied by Hinton (MS.), who has recently determined the 

 bones of individuals used for food from the midden of Rayleigh Castle, 

 Essex, the occupation of which commenced in the eleventh and ended 

 about the beginning of the thirteenth century. That they must have 

 become plentiful, at any rate locally, by, at latest, the second half of 

 the latter century, is shown by an inquisition of Lundy Island made in 

 1274 (Steinman, Collectanea Topographica, iv., 1837, 316-17), wherein 

 the annual taking is estimated at two thousand, being worth £5, 10s., 

 and the estimate is said to be at 5s. 6d. "each hundred skins, because 

 the flesh is not sold," although it was considered as of some value to 

 the keepers of the island. In 1272 the capture of conies with ferrets 

 at Waleton is mentioned (Rogers, History of Agriculture and Prices in 

 England, ii., 576); and in 1282, at Rhuddlan Castle, Flint, Richard-le- 

 Forester received 3s. 6d. for catching these animals for the king's use 

 and for keeping the king's ferrets {The A ntiqu a ry, August 191 1, 302). 

 Subsequent allusions are more frequent; in 1290 rabbit-warrens 

 {cunicnlarid) appear in Fleta (see above, p. 178), and the skins were 

 priced at Oxford several times between 13 10 and 1313 at rates varying 

 from ten to the shilling to twenty-six for is. 1 id. (Rogers, op. cit., ii. 

 537). The animal soon became an important item at feasts, and in 

 Henry's History of Great Britain (ed. I., 1781, vol. iv., App. iii.), 

 being a translation from Histories Anglicance Scriptorcs, by Gulielmus 

 Thorn. Cantuariensis, 1652 (Chronica, 2010), the following list of meat 

 and poultry is recorded as having been paid for at the installation feast 

 of Ralph de Borne, Abbot of St Austin's Abbey, Canterbury, in 1309 : — 



De porcis C. pretii . 



De multonibus CC. pretii . 



De aucis M. pretii . 



De caponibus et gallinis D. pretii 



De pulonibus iiij. C. Ixjjj. pretii 



De porcellis CC. pretii 



De Cignis xxxiiij. pretii 



De cuniculis vj. C. pretii . 



Line i=porkers; 2 = wethers; 3 = geese ; 4 weapons and fowls ; 5 = chickens; 6 — apparently 

 sucking pigs ; 7 = swans; 8 = rabbits. 



The rabbits, therefore, cost 6d. each, equal to about 6s. 6d. of our own time- 



VOL. II. N 



