i86 LEPORID^— ORYCTOLAGUS 



This price, which was identical with that of a porcellus (? = sucking 

 pig) in the same list, presents a valuable indication of the scarcity 

 of rabbits at the period, and suggests that they were still something 

 out of the common. On the other hand, it seems to have been 

 exceptionally high even for the time, for the maximum encountered 

 by Rogers, who {pp. cit.) made a special study of the question, was jd. 

 each in 1 270, and thereafter, according to his researches, rabbits became 

 cheaper until, in 1365,^ they were entered in certain lists at 2|d. {op. cit., 

 i., 33 and 165), and in 1413-1414 at 2d. (pp. cit., iii., 130). Rogers con- 

 sidered (i., 340) that in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries rabbits 

 were so dear as to suggest, either that they were at that time confined 

 to particular localities, from which they subsequently spread over the 

 whole country (a view which seems to be countenanced by the fact that 

 the value did not increase in the later part of the period) ; or, as seems 

 hardly credible, that they were rigorously and effectually protected in 

 the interests of the great landowners. Not only were the prices at 

 first, relatively to those charged for other provisions, very high, but they 

 afterwards declined, which is difficult to understand, " except on the 

 hypothesis that rabbits were scarce, had been but lately introduced 

 into the country, and were confined to very narrow limits or to 

 particular properties" (p. 341). 



Conies are often mentioned in the fourteenth century, as, for 

 instance, by the poet Chaucer (1340-1400), "The litel conyes to hir 

 playe gan hie " {Assembly of Foules, ed. Bell, iv., 1963) ; this line, how- 

 ever, as Skeat has most kindly informed me, was taken direct by 

 Chaucer from an older French poem, Roman de la Rose (see below, p. 

 196), and must, therefore, be ruled out as evidence. In 1377 the animals 

 were an article of commerce in Berwickshire (Tate, Proc. Berwickshire 

 Nat. Club, 1863-1868, 441, 1869), and in 1389 conynges, with their 

 warrens and connigries, and ferrets make their first appearance in the 

 Statute Book (13 Richard II., stat. i., c. 13). But some records still 

 suggest scarcity. At a banquet given to Richard 1 1, by the Bishop of 

 Durham in 1386 four hundred conies were served ; but in a Determina- 

 tion Feast in 1395 twenty couples were bought at 66. or 8d. the couple, 

 which seem to have been procured from Bushey, Hertfordshire, whence 

 they were carried to Oxford at a charge of |d. each. This would 

 hardly have been necessary had the animals not been scarce, and the 

 fact supports Rogers's belief, as quoted above, that they were still 

 unevenly distributed over the country, having been introduced before 

 the thirteenth century. 



In the early years of the fifteenth century the animals were mentioned 



' In Boase's Registrum Collegii Exoniensis, 1894, xl., it is stated that in Lent 1361, 

 at a feast of St Thomas the Martyr, 8d. was paid " for rabbits," but unfortunately no 

 account is given of the number obtained for this sum. 



