THE PRICE OF LIVE STOCK. 341 



periods. But in the Determination Feast twenty couples of 

 these animals are bought at 6d. y twenty at 8d. the couple. 

 These rabbits seem to have been bought at Bushey in Herts, 

 and to have been carried thence to Oxford, at the charge of 

 a halfpenny each. Surely if rabbits had been in those days 

 as widely distributed as they are now, the purveyors of this 

 feast would neither have needed to travel so far in search of 

 them, nor to have paid so high a price for a kind of game which 

 is so cheap at present, and which, had it been indigenous, would, 

 we should suppose, have been more easily obtained in that time 

 than it is now l . We know but little of the periods at which ani- 

 mals now familiar were introduced into England. Thus, though 

 I am far from saying that they could not have been found, it is 

 a little singular that I have never met with any entry either of 

 hares or pheasants in the period before me, and it is the more 

 remarkable in the earlier period, because the Bigod and Clare 

 accounts give considerable details of the domestic life and ex- 

 penditure of the Earls of Norfolk and Gloucester. 



The subjoined tables give, first, the average price of cattle, 

 horses, sheep, pigs, and poultry ; and among them one column 

 contains the price of muttons or wethers at the highest price. 

 Then follow, as before, decennial averages of the different kinds 

 of stock, which have been tabulated under the several years, 

 and at the foot of these is given the general average for the 

 whole period. Under the heading 'Sow and Pigs' the number 

 in Roman numerals represents the young ones wru'ch the entry 

 includes. Porcelli, lambs, and poultry are reckoned in pence. 



In 1308, 1317, 1318, 1320, 1322, 1347 the original gives 

 the entries put under Hoggasters in the table as lambs. The 

 lambs in 1350 are taken from an account of the manor of 

 Slepe, and are not given in the tables of vol. ii. 



1 If rabbits were, as I suspect, introduced into England in or just before the thirteenth 

 century, they would spread very slowly over the country. Rabbits seldom, if ever, go 

 more than a hundred yards from their home. Hares, of course, range for long distances . 

 Cunicularia is found in Fleta in the "sense of a rabbit warren ; but there are no such 

 warrens mentioned in Domesday. 



